A/s».>^.-»'^.°.''2*" University Library 
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Cornell University 
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MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 
 
 ^eronU Series. 
 
 REV. WILLIAM KIRKUS, LL.B. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 LONGMANS, GEEEN, EEADEE, % DYEE. 
 
 1869. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SATIRE . ... 1 
 
 FBODDE's ELIZABETH . ... .37 
 
 CONVICT MANAGEMENT .... 67 
 
 MODEL SERMONS . . lO."? 
 
 RITUALISM ... . . . 153 
 
 ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY 
 
 IDENTICAI, ... . . . 205 
 
 LECKY's " RATIONALISM IN EUROPE ' . . . 237 
 
 THE NEW REFORMATION . . ... 281 
 
 MR. JOHN STUART MILL ... . . 320 
 
ON SATIRE. 
 
 " Answer not a fool according to his folly, lesi thou also 
 be like unto him." " Answer a fool according to his 
 folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit."! These are 
 two contradictory proverbs, which are to be found side 
 by side in a venerable book with which all Englishmen 
 are supposed to be peculiarly famUiar. They furnish a 
 good example both of the value of proverbs, and of their 
 complete inadequacy as rules of life. A proverb is the 
 expression of a very wide experience ; an experience so 
 wide that it is in a measure common to a whole people,, 
 or even to the whole human race. But not the whole 
 life of any individual, much less the experience of 
 hundreds of millions of mankind, separated from one 
 another by enormous intervals both of space and time, 
 can ever be condensed into a single sentence. A man's 
 life, in almost every sense, is a heap of contradictions, 
 a long series of conflicts, a daily death, and a perpetual 
 new birth. And when men come to live together, the 
 moral permutations and combinations which become 
 possible are absolutely innumerable. Among these 
 combinations, unfortunately, it is possible to find fools 
 
 * " Victoria Magazine," July, 18fi5. 
 f Proverbs xxvi. 4, 5. 
 
 B 
 
53 ON SATIRE. 
 
 mingled with wise men, and needing to be dealt with 
 in whatever way may be best. How, then, shall a wise 
 man answer a fool ? We find, in actual fact, that people 
 shape their conduct according to one or other of the two 
 contradictory proverbs already quoted. There are men 
 who laugh at folly till they themselves become almost 
 incapable of perceiving that it is anything worse than a 
 joke. There are others who spend their utmost wisdom 
 in gravely answering absurdities, and utterly refuting 
 preposterous nonsense, which a mere laugh might 
 shatter to pieces in a moment. We are not likely to 
 win, in our battle either with folly or vice, unless we are 
 prepared to accept both the proverbs just quoted, as 
 indicating the behaviour required and justified by a 
 long and wide experience. There are times, in short, 
 when flippancy must be rebuked by solemn gravity ; and 
 there are times when the lightest jest would be sufficient 
 for its discomfiture. And so in literature there is a 
 place for grave books on law and ethics, for treatises on 
 the highest good, and the great end of human life ; and 
 there is room also for comedy and satire. 
 
 It is difficult to imagine any time in the history of 
 man when comedy and satire had no existence ; except, 
 perhaps, that probably short period which was spent by 
 our first parents in the garden of Eden. The perfection 
 of that primaeval state, if just a little monotonous, 
 must have excluded those vanities which are the proper 
 object of laughter and scorn. At any rate, if Mr. 
 Carlyle be right, and if the very vices of mankind are 
 essentially only different kinds of clothes, the satirist 
 could have had no message for creatures so entirely 
 unsophisticated as Adam and Eve. And yet no sooner 
 does sin enter into the world than satire comes along with 
 
ON SATIRE. 3 
 
 it ; and there is a wondrous irony, a bitter scorn of that 
 tremendous loss which Adam and Eve believed §o surely 
 ■would be an immeasurable gain, in the few simple words, 
 " They knew that they were naked." There is a comic 
 side even of the worst sins ; every sort of evil is quite 
 out of joint ; and there must always have been men 
 who were capable of perceiving this, and who tried to 
 cure or punish vice and folly by laughing them out of 
 countenance. But as a department of literature, both 
 comedy and satire, which are very nearly akin, are 
 among the latest results of civilization. They impty 
 an artificial life, which renders it extremely easy for 
 people to seem what they are not ; a state of society in 
 which etiquette becomes of more importance than good 
 manners ; in which the free utterance of a man's genuine 
 feelings is forbidden as coarse and vulgar ; and in which 
 therefore all manner of affectations abound on every 
 side. It is not quite easy to determine whether satire 
 preceded comedy or grew out of it ; but whatever their 
 history may be, they are in nature related to each other 
 almost as epic poetiy is related to tragedy. Epic poetry 
 is descriptive, and as it were historical ; but tragedy is the 
 imitation of actual life. The tragedian does not relate 
 how men have fought or suffered ; he makes them fight 
 or suffer before our very eyes. He does not dissect his 
 characters, and show us their various motives, but he 
 permits us to listen to what they say, and to see what 
 they do, and so to ascertain for ourselves what they 
 really are. In like manner, comedy is the playful 
 representation of real life. It accomplishes that moral 
 purpose which all good comedy has, by actually exhibit- 
 ing to us that grotesque and contemptible behaviour 
 which we always despise and ridicule whenever we are 
 
 b2 
 
4 ON SATIBE. 
 
 in a position inapartially to judge it. Satire, on the 
 other hand, is more directly didactic ; it dissects cha- 
 racter instead of representing it in action. It does not 
 suffer the vain man simply to exhibit his vanity to us, 
 that more in mirth than anger we may laugh him to 
 scorn ; but it takes him apart, and strips off, one after 
 another, all his showy disguises, till his deformity is 
 before us in its utter nakedness, and we thrust him 
 away with execrations. 
 
 For obvious reasons, we find the masterpieces of 
 ancient comedy among the Greeks, and the master- 
 pieces of satire among the Romans. The gravity of the 
 Romans was more adverse than Greek decorum to 
 histrionic performances ; and this is an aversion with 
 which the English character can very thoroughly 
 sympathise. It is impossible not to admire a good 
 actor ; and it is impossible not to perceive how much 
 genius and labour, how much power akin to the poet's 
 own, are necessary to histrionic perfection. But there 
 are vei-y few Englishmen of good education and easy 
 circumstances, who would consent to he even first-rate 
 actors. There seems to be something undignified in 
 the dresses, the attitudes, the false colours and lights, 
 the feigned passion, and the innumerable unrealities of 
 the stage. And yet this feeling may spring, not from 
 the superior strength and solidity, but from the far 
 inferior versatility of English character. We are for 
 ever haunted by a self-consciousness which forbids a 
 hearty abandonment to innocent and healthy pleasure ; 
 and which nothing seems able to control but money- 
 making and religion. Nay, even our religion itself is 
 far too subjective, far more the expression of what we 
 think we are towards God, than of what we believe God 
 
ON SATIBE. 5 
 
 is towards us. Even in its public exercises, in the 
 devotion of Christian congregations, an Englishman can 
 scarcely kneel to pray without remembering that his 
 attitude may be 'ungainly, and that somebody behind 
 may be laughing at him. Or, again, in a veiy different 
 region of life, most young people enjoy dancing; and 
 probably no exercise is more pleasurable, so long as it is 
 genuine dancing. But it may be doubted whether more 
 than very few young men are capable of forgetting them- 
 selves enough to be made happy by so graceful and' 
 fascinating an amusement. Apart, moreover, from the 
 solidity and reticence of Eoman character, which were 
 unfavourable to the full development of comedy, the 
 political relations of Rome were far less elastic than 
 those of Greece. The Roman watchword was "order," 
 the Greek was " freedom." It could not be permitted 
 in a well-ordered society, that chief citizens should be 
 made the laughing-stock of any crowd of idlers. In 
 fact, dignity is less easily killed even by crime than by 
 derision. 
 
 But, on the other hand, religion is the chief leveller ; 
 in the sight of the gods all men are alike, in their 
 exceeding smallness. Again, they are alike to the divine 
 mercy and care. 
 
 " Carior est illis homo quam sibi." 
 
 The chief festivals, therefore, of the more powerful 
 divinities were seasons of licence — " liberty, equality, 
 fraternity " — and above all, the god Dionysus required 
 of his worshippers that they should revel in his gifts 
 with boisterous, grateful, self-forgetting mirth. The 
 worship of this god has, indeed, passed through all 
 stages of debasement, till Bacchus has become the 
 
b ON SATIEE. 
 
 symbol of a worse than beastly sottishness. But he 
 was not such in the beginning. On the contrary, it is, 
 in a manner, to him that we owe those masterpieces of 
 ancient wisdom and genius which have survived the 
 wreck of civilisation itself, and floated safely over the 
 deluge by which the old world was overwhelmed. That 
 quick perception and ardent love of the beautiful by 
 which the Greeks were distinguished, and the liveliness 
 of their temperament, preserved them from the dreadful 
 excesses of cruelty and lust which disgraced the Roman 
 Bacchanalia. But when all men are suddenly reduced 
 to one level, and permitted to address one another with 
 unrestrained freedom, it is quite impossible to guarantee 
 that the control of good feeling, or even common justice, 
 will supply the place of the ordinary restraints of law. 
 The scurrilous songs of the festive chorus, which gave 
 place at a later period to comedy itself, were full of 
 unmeasured invective and unpardonable libel; which, 
 in fact, characterised Athenian comedy so long as it 
 retained sufficient wit and spirit to be worth regard. 
 
 " Never, probably," says Mr. Grote,* "will the fuU and un- 
 shackled force of comedy be so exhibited again. Without having- 
 Aristophanes actually before us, it would have been impossible 
 to imagine the unmeasured and unsparing licence of attack 
 assumed by the old comedy upon the gods, the institutions, the 
 poUticians, philosophers, poets, private citizens specially named — 
 and even the women, whose life was entirely domestic — of 
 Athens." 
 
 With the loss of political freedom the Athenians 
 
 suffered also the loss of that literary liberty which they 
 
 had so recklessly abused. From that time Greek comedy 
 
 lost its spirit and worth ; it was at once too dramatic 
 
 * " Greece," viii. 450, (1850.) 
 
ON SATIRE. 
 
 to be genuine satire, and too satirical to be genuine 
 drama. Greece enslaved could accomplish no more of 
 those literary achievenients which were in fact the very 
 offspring of liberty ; and from the time of the loss of 
 her independence it was only her ever living past which 
 ruled the thought of the world. 
 
 The licence granted by the great religious festivals, 
 and the love of jest and banter inherent in human 
 nature itself, found their best literary expression among 
 the Romans, not in comedy (for reasons already alluded 
 to) but in satire ; and the satires of Horace, Persius, 
 and Juvenal, are still unrivalled. Our English satirists 
 have done little else, and nothing better, than imitate 
 them ; while, perhaps, none of them has reached the 
 moral earnestness of Juvenal. Horace (whom Persius, 
 both in style and moral purpose, closely resembles) is 
 the representative of those who good-humouredly casti- 
 gate the smaller vices and inconvenient follies of man- 
 kind. Indeed, he was far more a polished gentleman 
 than a poet, beautiful though many of his poems are. 
 They have more of good taste, exquisite neatness, 
 perfect finish, than of real genius, or depth of emotion, 
 or wealth of imagination. His choice of epithets is 
 marvellously felicitous ; they are never vulgar, coarse, 
 exaggerated. No heat of passion makes him forget 
 the reticence of good breeding. And so, in his satires, 
 he looks at vice as unbefitting a well-bred gentleman ; 
 as a rude, unmannerly impertinence. His rebukes 
 would scarcely touch the evil-doers ; they were too 
 delicate and refined. He was no match for the inso- 
 lence of wickedness. He could caricature, for the 
 amusement of his friends, the oddities, the follies, 
 even the vices of his age ; but his weapon was no way 
 
8 ON SATIRE. 
 
 sharp enough to pierce the thick, tough hide of fools 
 and knaves. He seems unconsciously to reappear in 
 almost every satire as he shows himself in the ninth 
 of the first Book — sauntering along the Via Sacra, 
 pestered by a forward coxcomb whose intrusive inso- 
 lence he was too gentlemanly to resent ; or again, as 
 in the first of the second Book — writing because he 
 must write, because somehow he couldn't sleep if he 
 didn't. Even if- he seems to forget himself in un- 
 wonted sternness, he is more vexed with himself than 
 with those whom his lashes have hurt ; and he writes 
 a satire, which is scarcely satirical at all, to show how 
 necessary it is to put up with people as we find them, 
 and to make allowance for one another. " Deal with 
 your friends' faults," he says, " as mothers do with the 
 deformities of their children ; call them by soft, sweet 
 names. Let the close be called thrifty ; the silly man 
 who is a little too prone to boast, say he is anxious to 
 please ; the rude and . off-handed, say he is natural and 
 manly ; the passionate, high-spirited. This is the way 
 to make friends and to keep them." If a man can 
 scarcely open his mouth without uttering some villanous 
 lie, say " all his geese are swans." If he is an arrant 
 coward, call him prudent. So will the awkward rough- 
 nesses of life be smoothed down, and human fellowship 
 be made easy and agreeable. So it will, indeed ; but the 
 man who could write thus has missed the true, or at 
 any rate the highest, aim of satire. Horace was no 
 great teacher of morality — he was too much afraid of 
 being thought ungenerous, fault-finding, censorious ; a 
 most real danger, to which everyone will find himself 
 exposed who tries to mend the mischief which he sees 
 around him. He frankly acknowledges that he wrote 
 
ON SATIKE. 3 
 
 not for the many, but for the little circle of his refined 
 and cultivated friends. Moreover, his intimate friend- 
 ship with Msecenas, and those yet more illustrious men 
 to whom the patronage of Mascenas was an easy intro- 
 duction, may have taught him to regard with a sort of 
 toleration those follies which were rapidly becoming 
 very dangerous vices. It is impossible to conceive of a 
 lower degradation than for a great and powerful nation 
 to be sunk in such undiscriminating luxui-y that the 
 highest enjoyment of its chief men becomes scarcely 
 better thajQ a refinement of gluttony. Perhaps this 
 vice had in the time of Horace scarcely begun to attract 
 the attention of even thoughtful men ; just as in private 
 life we may become aware that our friends have an eager 
 relish for the pleasm-es of the table, long before we per- 
 ceive that the flesh is utterly subduing the spirit, and 
 changing the man into an animal. But by the time of 
 Juvenal, gluttony had become one of the most con- 
 temptible' and evfen dangerous vices of the Eoman 
 people. Horace, however, was more at home when 
 satirising in his gentlemanly -yay the airs of those rich, 
 vulgar men who imagine themselves capable of giving 
 an entertainment to choice spirits, simply because they 
 can aiford to buy delicate viands and hire skilful cooks. 
 He was unspeakably amused by watching the mingled 
 impudence and cowardice of that sort of people ; their 
 affectation of equality with their guests, continually 
 discomfited by their complete knowledge of their own 
 meanness. It is at once painful and amusing to reflect 
 as you sit at table, that your host is the very meanest 
 piece of furniture that his house contains. In fact, 
 Horace is the representative of one of the two classes 
 into which satirists may be divided, and Juvenal is the 
 
10 ON SATIRE. 
 
 representatiye of the other. The one is the sath-ist of 
 folly ; the other the satirist of vice. 
 
 " Juvenal had to deal with vice and foUy more than a century 
 older than the vice and foUy of Horace's day, and a tyranny 
 which Horace never witnessed. The playful personalities of 
 Horace did not suit Juvenal's subject, and would not have repre- 
 sented his way of viewing it, nor did they suit the severe and 
 defiant spirit in which he approached it." * 
 
 The morality of Juvenal is so pure and stern, that 
 some have almost persuaded themselves that he was a 
 Christian. It was less "technical" than that of 
 Horace. It was not the virtue of a gentleman, but of 
 an earnest, upright man. It regarded vice not as a 
 folly that might be laughed at, nor as a ridiculous 
 breach of good manners, but as an unspeakable base- 
 ness, destroying the true life of an individual and the 
 peace of society. Indeed, that any Roman could have 
 contemplated the moral condition of his nation in the 
 time of Juvenal without loathing and terror, would have 
 been utterly incredible, except for the far more terrible 
 wonder that Eomans could have been found guilty of 
 those vices which Juvenal lashes with such unsparing 
 severity. The growing wealth of our own country, its 
 ever-increasing luxuries and refinements, its cessation 
 from all plans of conquest, its principle of non-inter- 
 vention in those noble quarrels which at any rate are 
 more heroic than gluttony and lust, its almost absolute 
 security from the attacks of foreign enemies ; these and 
 many other causes are combining to enable us to under- 
 stand that rottenness of civilisation by which the Eoman 
 Empire was cursed. There is probably not a single 
 vice satirised by Juvenal which might not be discovered 
 * Macleane's " Juvenal." (Bibl. Class.) Introduction. 
 
ON SATIRE. 11 
 
 in London itself: but as yet, at any rate, the vices of 
 our own day are content to pay to virtue the tribute of 
 hypocrisy. The vices of Rome in the time of Juvenal 
 were utterly shameful and obtrusive. 
 
 The degradation of women was at once the effect and 
 the far more fruitful cause of every other degradation. 
 
 " Surely you once were sane," says Juvenal to Postumus, in 
 his sixth Satire, " are you really going to marry a wife ? what 
 fiiry is it that is driving you mad? are you really going to 
 submit to one of these she-tyrants, whilethere are so many ropes 
 left in the world by whiqh you might hang yourself; when there 
 are so many windows high enough to make you giddy, from which 
 you may throw yourself down ; when you can so easily plunge 
 from the .JEmilian bridge into the river ? " 
 
 And then there follows that scorching satire which 
 leaves us no room to wonder why the Eoman Empire 
 should have been broken in pieces. 
 
 " Eastern impostures and Greek debauchery," says Mr. Mac- 
 leane, in his introduction to the sixth Satire, " very quickly took 
 root in the soil of Rome, and brought forth the fruits of a ram- 
 pant superstition and proiligacy, especially among women ; and 
 these two were so mingled, that the very shrines which cherished 
 the one were the shameless scenes of the other. Extravagance, 
 without generosity, and driven on by mad lust, bred covetousness ;. 
 and covetousness, murder ; so that poisonings were frequent and 
 notorious. The conditions of domestic slavery gave terrible scope 
 for [the caprices and violence which self-indulgence generates : 
 and the sufferings of the poor wretches from the ill-temper of 
 their mistresses is described in language which has the air of 
 extravagance, but may nevertheless be accepted as true, not only 
 from the testimony of other writers, but from the nature of the 
 case, the known character of the women, the legal and social 
 position of the slave, and, moreover, the experience (perhaps in 
 more exceptional cases) of modern times. The love of personal 
 display, of finery, of gossip, of public amusements, and the 
 affectation of learning, and pride of birth, and the self-com- 
 placency of virtue, are strongly put, but not more so than the 
 
12 ON SATIBE. 
 
 present generation might readily bear. Gluttony and drunken- 
 ness are not commonly reckoned among women's failings, but 
 they appear to have been prevalent in the time of Domitian. 
 The foUy which is, perhaps, most inexplicable, and without 
 parallel in our own days, was that of women of family engaging 
 in the arena, and practising as gladiators, hunters, charioteers, 
 and so forth,, in the circus and amphitheatre. That such was 
 the madness of the time there is no doubt ; and it forms one of 
 the many monstrous features of this satire, in which there are 
 no traces of those crimes which are usually associated with the 
 nobler passions in women, jealousy, disappointed love, ambition ; 
 but aU is grovelling, depraved, and despicably mean."* 
 
 Juvenal scourges with equal energy those smaller 
 vices which, less dangerous in themselves, are un- 
 happily unmistakeahle signs of worse and more fatal 
 mischiefs. He exposes, for instance, in the fifth Satire, 
 that beggarly servility which characterised the parasites 
 of his time. There were men in Eome too idle even 
 to beg, who exhausted all the contrivances of their 
 ingenuity in securing an invitation to dine with some 
 wealthy citizen. The race of parasites is not even yet 
 extinct, nor, unhappily, is that race of Virros upon 
 whom parasites feed. There are stupid people enough 
 who are for ever clinging to the skirts of greatness, and 
 who almost seem able to persuade themselves that mere 
 local proximity to worth is actual worthiness. To stand 
 on the platform of a railway station while the Queen 
 passes by in an express train, seems to fools of this sort 
 to constitute a kind of intimacy with the royal family. 
 If you had never spoken a word to a nobleman, there 
 are powdered flunkeys who would look down upon you 
 with a kind of contemptuous pity, because, forsooth, 
 they had blacked the boots of a duke, or carried a stick 
 with a gold knob behind the back of a duchess. But 
 * Macleane's " Juvenal," Sat. VI. Introduction. 
 
ON SATIRE. 1& 
 
 there is a flunkeyism in everybody. There are many 
 men, not without ability, who could be bribed to change 
 their social or political opinions for the honour of form- 
 ing part of a deputation to some great man. The 
 servility that prostrates itself before mere rank or 
 fortune, is a servility fatal to all nobleness, not only in 
 the slave, but in the master. The man must be mean 
 indeed who thinks the rank that parasites could give 
 worth taking. 
 
 The best known of Juvenal's Satires is the tenth. 
 It is not, perhaps, the best of them, but it is less than 
 any of the others bounded by those peculiar conditions 
 of time and place in which Juvenal wrote. It is, there- 
 fore, most capable of imitation, and has been not 
 unsuccessfully imitated in our own language by Dr. 
 Samuel Johnson. Examples of the vanity of human 
 wishes are to be found all over the world. Perhaps the 
 prayers of mankind are among the most woful proofs 
 of their ignorance and blindness ; and it is the most 
 singular blessing of Heaven that the larger half of the 
 passionate entreaties of human beings are utterly unre- 
 garded. The close of the tenth Satire of Juvenal is 
 surely written not without some Divine inspiration ; 
 it is so full of reverence, so full of submission to the 
 Divine will ; so fuU of trust in that heavenly wisdom 
 which doeth all things well, and yet so full of that filial ' 
 confidence which must tell its griefs and wants to 
 Heaven, out of that pure love which can keep no secrets 
 from the loving Father of all. 
 
 " Are then," asks the poet, " frail short-sighted men to wish 
 for nothing ? If you will take my advice, you wiLL Ipave the gods 
 themselves to hestow what is hest for us, what is really for our 
 highest good. Not always what is pleasantest, hut everything 
 
14 ON SATIRE. 
 
 that is really best, the gods wiU give us. Man is dearer to them 
 than to himseK. We, led astray by the heat of passion, and strong 
 blind lust, desire marriage and children ; but to the gods only is 
 it known what sort of woman would be our wife, and what sort 
 of boys our sons. But if you must vow your vows, and pray for 
 anything, pray that you may have a healthy mind and a healthy 
 body ; ask for a stout heart, free from the dread of death, count- 
 ing the last end of life among the good gifts of nature, with 
 power to bear aU its appointed toils ; a soul that is free from 
 angry passions and from covetous desires, and that believes the 
 labours and hard toils of Hercules nobler than lust, and appetite, 
 and luxury."* 
 
 It is far beyond the limits of this short essay to give 
 anything Hke a histoiy of satire, Eoman or English. 
 Unhappily our English satirists were scarcely themselves 
 so far exalted above the vices they lashed, as ever to 
 approach the nobleness and perfect honesty of Juvenal. 
 Some of them are playful like Horace ; and even those 
 who hold up to scorn the more dangerous vices of man- 
 kind, seem sometimes to have caught the infection that 
 men can scarcely escape who are in familiar intercourse 
 with the deadliest sins. There is a taint of impurity 
 even in their rebukings of the impure. They sometimes 
 almost remind their reader of Byi'on's stupid jest about 
 the "Confessions" of St. Augustine, that "they make 
 the reader envy his transgressions." It is impossible to 
 believe in the complete sincerity of such a man as Swift, 
 whose works contain more unredeemed dirtiness than 
 can easily be found anywhere else in the whole English 
 language ; simple filth, without a spark of wit, or moral 
 purpose. Even of Dryden and Pope, it is often neces- 
 sary to remember the words of Holy Scripture, "the 
 scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat ; all there- 
 
 * Juvenal X. 346-362. 
 
ON SATIRE. 15 
 
 fore whatsoever they hid you observe, that observe and 
 do ; but do not ye after their works, for they say, and do 
 not."* The age of poetical satire, however, seems to 
 have passed away, and the satirists of our own time are 
 to be found chiefly among the writers of iiction. Men, 
 indeed, will never cease to laugh at what is ridiculous, 
 and to deride what is contemptible ; but now, instead of 
 satirists, we have what may perhaps be called satirical 
 writers ; such, for instance, as Mr. Carlyle, whose his- 
 tories even, and much more his miscellaneous essays and 
 lectures, contain a rich vein of satire. Mr. Thackeray, 
 again, and Mr. Charles Dickens, and almost every 
 novehst whose tales are worth a second reading, not only 
 describe the manners and characters of men, but also 
 castigate their vices and mock their follies They are, in 
 fact, notwithstanding their reputation for worldliness, 
 among our best lay teachers ; and not seldom they ad- 
 minister to powerful and shameless evil-doers those 
 stern rebukes which even ordained priests and ministers 
 of religion have not the courage to utter. 
 
 But of course the question arises, whether, after all, 
 satire should be considered one of the lawful weapons 
 that a kind and honest man may use in his war with 
 evil ? Why should he make himself disagreeable, and 
 those whom he attacks unhappy or savage? The knaves 
 and fools of the world are perhaps doing no great harm 
 to him ; why not let them alone, to reap in due time 
 according as they have sown ? Have not even satirists 
 themselves told us that the worst torment a wicked man 
 can know is inflicted by his own conscience ? Is anyone 
 justified in satirising his neighbours, stripping them 
 absolutely bare of all their little hypocrisies, pricking all 
 * Matthew xxiii. 2, 3. 
 
16 ON SATIRE. 
 
 the inflated bladders of their conceit, and holding up 
 their little shriveled insignificance for all the world to 
 grin at ? Is a man justified in doing all this, without 
 some grave provocation ? Perhaps Pope may give us the 
 answer to some, at least, of these questions. 
 
 " Ask you what provocation I have had ? 
 The strong antipathy of good to bad. 
 When truth or ■\'irtue an affront endures, 
 Th' affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours. 
 Mine, as a foe professed to false pretence, 
 Who think a coxcomb's honour like his sense ; 
 Mine, as a friend to every worthy mind, 
 And mine as man, who feel for all mankind. 
 F. You're strangely proud. ' 
 P. So proud, I am no slave, 
 So impudent, I own myself no knave, 
 So odd, my country's ruin makes me grave.- — 
 Yes, I am proud ; I must be proud to see 
 Men, not afi-aid of God, afraid of me ; 
 Safe from the Bar, the Pulpit, and the Thi-one, 
 Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone." 
 
 It is quite impossible to have a sufficient contempt for 
 that mean and cowardly selfishness, which blinds a man 
 to every vice which does not endanger his own safety or 
 rob his own purse. If the satirist be asked, " Why do 
 you write these stinging, burning words which are sure 
 to inflict a thousand wounds that time can never heal ? 
 Why do you make men look so exceedingly small, and 
 rob them of the paltry comfort of imposing on them- 
 selves ? Why do you drag Pharisees out into the broad 
 daylight, and sign them with the mark of the beast ? " 
 Then he may surely answer, " I do all this, and I write 
 all this, because it is true and right ; because a Pharisee 
 is a detestable and dangerous humbug ; because the more 
 he cants and snivels, the more detestable and dangerous 
 
ON SATIRE. 17 
 
 he is. I will not, if I can help it, suifer anybody to im- 
 pose upon himself; because he never can cheat himself 
 without intentionally or unintentionally robbing others, 
 without pushing himself into places for which he is not 
 fit, and thereby pushing others out of places for which 
 they are fit. I will laugh at folly as long as I have life 
 enough to laugh with, because it has neither wit nor 
 beauty, because in the end it never fails to mar genuine 
 mirth, because it is sure to break up every happy fellow- 
 ship, and to put all human relationships miserably out of 
 joint. Do you tell me that the hornets will sting me ? 
 Let them sting. I shall at least have the satisfaction of 
 giving them something to sting for. I can, at any rate, 
 destroy their nest, and help to stamp the next generation 
 of them out of existence ; and no sting has half so much 
 venom, as the consciousness of being a miserable coward 
 or a contemptible flunkey." That, we may be sure, is 
 something like the answer that a satirist might be ex- 
 pected to give. 
 
 Moreover, there are many follies and vices which can 
 be punished in no other way than by the whips of the 
 satirist. There are wrongs which are, strictly speaking, 
 neither civil injuries nor crimes; which, nevertheless, are 
 quite as fraudulent as thieving, and quite as cruel as 
 murder. Indeed, there are wrongs so compounded of 
 fraud and cruelty, that they are as bad as murder and 
 theft put together. When, for instance, the accom- 
 plished proprietor of Dotheboys' Hall advertised in the 
 Times newspaper. Morning Post, Chronicle, Herald, 
 and Advertiser, regarding the academy at the delightful 
 village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire, 
 where youth are boarded, clothed, booked, washed, fur- 
 nished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, 
 ''V.: c 
 
18 ON SATIRE. 
 
 &c., &c. ; nobody needs to be informed that the worthy 
 Squeers was lying ; and that every confiding parent who 
 entrusted his child to the kindness and scholarship of 
 that renowned pedagogue, was simply swindled. But 
 there was no law that "Wackford Squeers, Esq., could be 
 proved to have broken ; his roguery did not come within 
 the legal definition of fraud, or obtaining money iinder 
 false pretences. So, again, when brimstone and treacle 
 was administered to the boys weekly, and the spoon 
 wiped on the hair of the smallest, with a view to di- 
 minish at once the appetite of the boarders and the do- 
 mestic expenses of the establishment, and to produce a 
 sweet submissiveness of disposition in the junior pupils, 
 it is plain to the meanest capacity that the authorities 
 of Dotheboys' Hall were slowly killing the young gentle- 
 men who were entrusted to their care. But though un- 
 doubtedly breaking the sixth commandmeni^ Mr. Squeers 
 was no way guilty of committing murder. So Mr. 
 Charles Dickens bethought him of a number of laws, 
 which do not happen to be contained in the " statutes 
 at large," but which, nevertheless, are guarded by 
 sanctions and enforced by penalties that not even a Squeers 
 can afford to despise. He simply exhibited the York- 
 shire schoolmaster in his real character — his double, his 
 many-sided character. There was Squeers the adver- 
 tiser, the accomplished instructor of youth, the tender 
 parent, the faithful adviser, the sage guide of boyhood in 
 the paths of virtue and wisdom ; and then there was 
 Squeers at home, exchanging confidences with his wife, 
 and training up his children in the way in which they 
 should go. In fact, Squeers was allowed to explain 
 himself to society at large ; and until that Hjieasure of 
 justice had been meted out to him, nobody could have 
 
ON SATIKE. 19 
 
 believed how gi-eat was the versatility of his genius, and 
 the copiousness of his resources. It is, of course, some- 
 times a little inconvenient to say everything we mean to 
 anybody who chooses to ask us for it ; it is generally a 
 far more shrewd arrangement to divide our different reve- 
 lations among the different classes of society ; appropria- 
 ting, for instance, the advertisement side of our character 
 to the parent, while we reserve the domestic confidences 
 for the pupil. Now Mr. Charles Dickens did neither more 
 nor less than take down the parents to the delightful village 
 of Dotheboys, on days when they were by no means ex- 
 pected — brimstone and treacle days, frozen water days, 
 distribution of pocket-money days, general thrashing 
 days — and the result was exceedingly damaging to Mr. 
 Squeers' finances and general reputation. It caused 
 acute sufiering to the tender-hearted schoolmaster, and 
 very probably even damaged the matrimonial prospects 
 of the charming Fanny. But how else was the York- 
 shire-school nuisance to be abated ? Was Mr. Dickens 
 to appeal to Mr. Squeers' sense of honour, to his love 
 of learning, to his paternal fondness for the innocent 
 children committed to his care ? Was he to refer him 
 to his advertisement, and meekly suggest that possibly a 
 way might be discovered of bringing the performance 
 somewhat nearer to the magnificent promises which the 
 advertisement set forth ? Of course, no such plan could 
 have been adopted. Mr. Wackford Squeers was one of 
 those pachydermatous brutes whom no gentle treatment 
 can affect; you might as well flog a rhinoceros with a 
 lady's riding-whip. He couldn't be hanged, though 
 hanging would have been too good for him ; he couldn't 
 be put in gaol for theft, though he more than deserved it. 
 But there was one thing which could be done ; Mr. 
 
 c2 
 
20 ON SATIRE. 
 
 Charles Dickens could paint his portrait ; he could take 
 every trustful parent down to the delightful village of 
 Dotheboys, and introduce them to Mr. Squeers' academy ; 
 and that was quite enough. Just show the cloven foot, 
 and he must be a poor fool indeed who does not recognise 
 the Devil ! 
 
 Nor need we in the least distress ourselves lest justice 
 too ample, and chastisement too severe, should have 
 been dealt out to this unhappy scoundrel. We might 
 have been afraid that education itself would have 
 been rendered almost impossible, and that too timid 
 schoolmasters might have shrunk altogether from 
 the responsibility and danger of their position ; that even 
 upright and competent teachers would have been kept 
 back from that path of usefulness which seemed already 
 thronged with impostors and knaves. No fear could be 
 more groundless ; you might as well hesitate to tread on 
 a slug, or crush a caterpillar, lest those interesting races 
 should become extinct. Somehow or other, in this 
 puzzling world, the nastiest and filthiest of animals 
 always increase with the most terrible fecundity. So far 
 from having destroyed the whole race of educational 
 scamps, somehow or other the chopping-up of Mr. 
 Squeers has produced exactly the same effect that is pro- 
 duced by the chopping-up of some of the lower animals 
 into bits. Each little bit gets a head and tail of its own, 
 and so the individual becomes a large family. Scores of 
 academies are advertised in the daily papers, with un- 
 blushing impudence and gigantic mendacity, which can- 
 not be less odious than Dotheboys' Hall. They only 
 take care to keep more completely on the safe side of the 
 law, and to administer refined torture instead of heavy 
 blows. They are like those murderers who kill, not by 
 
ON Satire. 21 
 
 beating in the heads of their victims with bludgeons, but 
 by sticking long, thin, sharp, steel needles into their 
 victims' ears and poking them about in the brains. Does 
 any human being out of Bedlam believe that Middlesex 
 is so totally different from Yorkshire, that in London 
 and its suburbs, for the trumpery remuneration of ^615 
 per annum, a child can be instructed in all the branches 
 of learning, kept comfortably warm by day and night, fed 
 with nutritious food and plenty of it, and enjoy all the 
 comforts of a happy home ? Yes, of course, all the 
 comforts of a happy home ! All the dainties and de- 
 lights of Pandasmonium ! And at any rate, let us do 
 justice even to those who seem least to deserve it. If 
 there is little to eat, and nothing to learn, there is at 
 any rate piety, and the strictest attention to the morals 
 of the pupils. 
 
 To take another example. How shall men deal with 
 such folly and vice as Mr. Thackeray satirises in "Vanity 
 Fair"? Do clergymen imagine that they can preach 
 down the vanities of the great world? and by mere 
 pulpit eloquence perSuade the rising generation of 
 Becky Sharpes, that " this world is all a fleeting show, 
 for man's illusion given " ? If they do, they possess 
 an inexhaustible fund of enjoyment ; for next to really 
 succeeding, there is perhaps no pleasure so comfortable 
 as to believe that you are succeeding. Young ladies and 
 gentlemen may be very devout at prayers and very 
 demure at sermon-time, but they do not for that reason 
 make their ministers their father confessors. There 
 are little sly wickednesses which they contrive to perpe- 
 trate in spite of all their Sunday propernesses. Staunch 
 old puritans are continually lamenting that the great 
 gulf that separates the Church from the world is already 
 
22 ON SATIRE. 
 
 ei'ossed by innumerable bridges ; and that, what with 
 the free and easy manners of piety, and the greatly 
 improved behaviour of sin, they are almost as like one 
 another as two peas. The little deceptions which are 
 practised every day in the most religious families are a 
 sufficient proof that there are evils which grave dis- 
 courses and solemn warnings can never touch. Besides, 
 the moral effect of punishment is greatly diminished, 
 when the moralist has only one punishment for all 
 degrees and kinds of offences. What can you do with 
 the smaller vices of the world, when you have nothing 
 else to threaten them with but everlasting damnation ? 
 Of course it is all very well and true, in a way ; but if 
 the choice is to lie between being damned for playing 
 at "beggar my neighbour" and being let off altogether, 
 the chances are that we shall be let off. To the philo- 
 sophy of the Stoics, all sins and all vices may be alike. 
 They are by no means alike to common , sense. There 
 is a very great part of evei-y-day life with which, possibly, 
 the pulpit need never meddle ; there is a great number of 
 the enjoyments of life, innocent amusements and relaxa- 
 tions, which are mere necessaries of life in an age and 
 country like ours. But, somehow or other, religion is 
 too often supposed to cover every occupation but prayer 
 and psalm-singing with gloom and danger ; and, there- 
 fore, young people naturally enough^ try to cut off one 
 great piece of their life from religion altogether. A 
 little, quiet whist party, for instance, is startled by the 
 sudden announcement of the favourite divine of the 
 family. What is really to be done in so terrible a 
 difficulty? Do they think whist-playing wrong ? Of 
 course they don't, or else they wouldn't play it. Even 
 mamma doesn't think it wrong; for while cards are 
 
ON SATIRE. 23 
 
 shufHed and dealt, and in the excitement of tricks and 
 rubbers, she can keep awake as long as the merriest of 
 her daughters. But then the parson would be shocked, 
 or at least he might think it necessary to pretend that 
 he was ; and besides, cards are one thing and parsons 
 are another, and it is a great pity to jumble them 
 together, till your vei^ minister perhaps might turn out 
 a jack or a deuce. So what is to be done ? How is 
 your esteemed friend to be welcomed ? Why of course 
 you will pay him the compliment of throwing a little 
 dust into his reverend eyes. You will shuffle aU your 
 cards away into a work-basket, cover them over with 
 stockings or baby linen, and betake yourself to pious 
 conversation, or whatever may turn up handiest. Or 
 why not all rise together in the eager affection of a 
 welcome, and totally forget what you were just doing 
 in the great joy of seeing him ? You can veiy easily 
 relieve your minds when he has gone, and begin a new 
 rubber if you can't remember where the last left off. 
 But how hot these little accidents make one, and what 
 a pity it is that piety should so often have to tell lies 
 for the sake of example ! 
 
 Besides, if the pulpit had more influence than it 
 really has upon regular church and chapel goers, it is 
 all too obvious that the inhabitants of Vanity Fair are 
 not by any means the most regular attendants at public 
 worship. Indeed, it may almost be affirmed that, in 
 this world at any rate, they are almost completely incor- 
 rigible, and can be converted neither by sermon nor 
 by satire. "fhe delights and miseries of a merely 
 fashionable life are like the delights and miseries of 
 intemperance. The successes that are achieved by 
 people like Becky Sharpe, and all the joys and triumphs 
 
24 ON SATIRE. 
 
 of that world into which she managed to thrust herself, 
 are hated even while they are loved. Though they are 
 eagerly pursued, it is in spite of the knowledge that 
 when they have been obtained, they will only bring new 
 disappointments and fresh bondage. A thousand times 
 over does the victim of fashion wish, as Becky did, 
 though in a lazy half-hearted sort of way, that she 
 could live somewhere a quiet kind of life, with all her 
 wants and luxuries supplied, and without the necessity 
 of that everlasting scheming and trickery which is at 
 once the occupation and the torment of a selfish, worldly 
 life. " ' It isn't difficult to be a country gentleman's 
 wife,' Kebecca thought. ' I think I could be a good 
 woman if I had five thousand a year. I could dawdle 
 about in the nursery, and count the apricots on the wall. 
 I could water plants in a green-house, and pick off dead 
 leaves from geraniums. I could ask old women about 
 their rheumatisms, and order half-a-crown's worth of 
 soup for the poor. I shouldn't miss it much out of 
 five thousand a year. I could even drive out ten miles 
 to dine at a neighbour's, and dress in the fashions of 
 the year before last. I could go to church and keep 
 awake in the great family pew ; or go to sleep behind 
 the curtains, with my veil down, if I only had practice. 
 I could pay everybody if I had but the money. This is 
 what the conjurors here pride themselves upon doing. 
 They look down with pity upon us miserable sinners 
 who have none. They think themselves generous if 
 they give our children a five-pound note, and us con- 
 temptible if we are without one.' And who knows 
 but Rebecca was right in her speculations, and that it 
 was only a question of money, or fortune, which made 
 the difference between her and an honest woman ? If 
 
ON SATIRE. 25 
 
 you take temptations into account, who is to say that he 
 is better than his neighbour ? A comfortable career of 
 prosperity, if it does not make people honest, at least 
 keeps them so. An alderman coming from a turtle 
 feast will not step out of his carriage to steal a leg of 
 mutton ; but put him to starve, and see if he will not 
 purloin a loaf. Becky consoled herself by so balancing 
 the chances, and equalizing the distribution of good and 
 evil in the world. 
 
 " The old ha,unts, the old fields and woods, the copses, 
 ponds, and gardens, the rooms of the whole house 
 where she had spent a couple of years seven years 
 ago, were all carefully revisited by her. She had been 
 young there, or comparatively so, for she forgot the 
 time when she ever ivas young ; but she remembered 
 her thoughts and feelings seven years back, and 
 contrasted them with those she had at present, now 
 that she had seen the world, and lived with great 
 people and raised herself far beyond her original 
 humble station. 
 
 " ' I have raised myself beyond it because I have 
 brains,' Becky thought, ' and almost all the rest of the 
 world are fools. I could not go back, and consort with 
 those people now, whom I used to meet in my father's 
 studio. Lords come up to my door with stars and 
 garters, instead of poor artists with screws of tobacco 
 in their pockets. I have a gentleman for my husband, 
 and an Earl's daughter for my sister, in the very house 
 where T was little better than a sei-vant a few years ago. 
 But am I much better to do now in the world than 
 when I was the poor painter's daughter, and wheedled 
 the grocer round the corner for sugar and tea ? Suppose 
 I had married Francis, who was so fond of me, I couldn't 
 
26 ON SATIRE. 
 
 have been much poorer than I am now. Heigho ! I 
 wish I could exchange my position in society, and all 
 my relations, for a snug sum in the Three per Cent. 
 Consols ; ' for so it was that Becky felt the vanity of 
 human affairs, and it was in those securities that she 
 would have liked to cast anchor." 
 
 But, unhappily, there is a fascination even in trickery 
 itself, a wild excitement in over-reaching people, in 
 fooling them to the top of their bent, making a profit 
 out of their petty vanities and easy credulity. The 
 chase becomes even more delightful than the game ; 
 and those, who unfortunately have given themselves up 
 to the pursuit of success which can only be achieved by 
 hypocrisy — and especially those who by hypocrisy have 
 actually achieved success — can very seldom be saved 
 excepting by being ruined. 
 
 The good done by such moralists as Mr. Thackeray, 
 is done to the people who are outside Vanity Fair, and 
 probably very seldom to those who are in it. The famous 
 little " Becky puppet, so uncommonly flexible in the 
 joints, and lively on the wire," utters its warnings 
 chiefly to those who sometimes half wish that they 
 could change places with her. Mr. Thackeray helps 
 such people to understand what a Becky Sharpe really 
 is ; and what was the exact price that she had to pay 
 for her brilliant successes. A large capital well man- 
 aged can always be made to yield large profits, even 
 though the capital itself be nothing better than impu- 
 dence. Inexhaustible resources of mendacity, and an 
 effrontery that never hesitates and is never known to 
 blush, can live almost as easily on nothing a year, as 
 on the fortune of a millionaire. It is not people like 
 Becky Sharpe who fail; it is the "poor devils " who 
 
ON SATIRE. 27 
 
 are simply unfortunate, who are too honest dehberately to 
 lie and swindle, and whose honesty seems to do them 
 no better service than publish to all the world when 
 they are hard up. Then, for the unhappy carcase, all 
 the eagles gather together. Poor fool ! Such an one 
 little knows the ways of the world, nor what a capital 
 price the devil will pay even in these times to any one 
 who does not mind selling his soul. A man in diffi- 
 culties should never retrench, he should always double 
 his expenditure ! If he can't pay the rent of a small 
 house, he should take a large one ; if he can't afford 
 a quiet brougham and one horse, he should buy a car'- 
 riage and pair, and hire an extra flunkey. " The prince 
 of Darkness is a gentleman," and will have nothing to 
 do with shabby establishments. 
 
 ' " Just pay my debts," says some unhappy mortal, 
 " that is my one great desire, the only favour I would 
 ask of you." 
 
 " Pay your debts," says Satan, " nothing of the sort ! 
 I never do things by halves ! You shall have a princely 
 establishment, an equipage that a nobleman might envy; 
 servants to wait upon, you at evei-y turning ; success in 
 every little practical joke you may wish to perpetrate ; 
 every miserable beggar that now duns you, licking the 
 soles of your feet with devout gratitude ; and an intro- 
 duction to the vei-y cream of society. As to the settle- 
 ment of ow little account, it can of course be deferred 
 from time to time for a trifling interest, and it will be 
 quite time enough to think about that when you grow 
 tired of my favours." 
 
 Now a parson would hesitate to put that sort of thing 
 into a sermon, and yet it might be as edifying as a dis- 
 course on the final perseverance of an elect ragamuffin. 
 
28 
 
 ON SATIRE. 
 
 It may be a very useful exercise to determine how many 
 angels could stand on the point of a needle ; but people 
 who are in danger of yielding to the temptations of 
 Vanity Fair don't care a bit of cotton whether it's one 
 or a million. 
 
 It is surely unnecessary to prove that the people whom 
 satire is meant to lash can be punished in no other way. 
 This is proved by the very fact that they need satirising. 
 For all manner of different methods have been employed 
 for their amendment, and even to prevent the necessity of 
 their ever needing to be amended, before they have arrived 
 at that particular stage of evil and mischievousness when 
 chastisement becomes necessary. They have heard 
 sermons, they have been presented with tracts, they 
 have been surrounded vnth good examples, they have 
 been surrounded by almost equally instructive bad 
 examples ; appeals have been made to their reason, 
 appeals have been made to their conscience, appeals 
 have been made even to their enlightened self-interest ; 
 and really there seems nothing left to be appealed to, 
 excepting, so to speak, their skin. Let them then be 
 well whipped with heavy thongs, or with little bits of 
 knotted whipcord, as the case may require. And why 
 whip them-at all ? does somebody ask. Why not let 
 them alone ? For the very simple reason that no human 
 being can be let alone. You can no more let a human 
 being alone, than you can let the middle joint of your 
 finger alone. It is always fastened to the top joint and 
 to the bottom joint ; and if it should choose to get 
 rotten, both these joints would have good ground of 
 complaint. Fools and knaves, and those people whose 
 characters are an ingenious compound of both, are like 
 the familiar ily that causes the ointment of the apothe- 
 
ON SATIRE. 29 
 
 cary to send forth a stinking savour. They are like a 
 piece of grit under your eye, or like a thorn down your 
 finger-nail. They are a perpetual bad example ; a bad 
 leaven, fermenting, corrupting, decomposing wherever 
 they are. Their reputation and all their hopes depend 
 upon men calling good evil, and evil good, putting light 
 for darkness, and darkness for light, sweet for bitter, 
 and bitter for sweet. Every pure and true society must 
 needs exclude them, for they are incompatible with 
 purity and truth. And if their falsehood is to be found 
 in the deepest and most sacred part of their lives, it 
 becomes a yet more solemn duty, a yet more grave 
 necessity, to lay it bare. 
 
 And this brings us to a very common objection urged, 
 not against satire generally, but against that satire 
 which presumes to meddle with what are called sacred 
 things. As if you would damage the apostles by 
 satirising Judas Iscariot ; or the publican, who prayed 
 " God be merciful to me a sinner," by satirising the 
 Pharisees who boasted that they were righteous and 
 despised others. What is it that makes all sensible and 
 honest people look with a sort of suspicion even upon 
 some of the best of the great religious and philanthropic 
 organizations of our own country ? They are no way 
 indifferent to the great objects for which these organiza- 
 tions exist; they are just as anxious as other people are, 
 that heathens should be made Christians, and they can 
 have no manner of objection even to the conversion of 
 " social evils " into decent members of society ; and 
 they are no way unwilling that the Gospel should be 
 put within the reach of those who spend most of the 
 week in selling whelks and periwinkles. But they 
 cannot help seeing that well-meaning people are not 
 
80 ON SATIKE. 
 
 ashamed of obtaining money for great societies by con- 
 temptible dodges which they would be ashamed , to 
 employ in any cause but the cause of Almighty God. 
 They know the world far too well to put the smallest 
 faith in tea parties for prostitutes at the healthy hour 
 of midnight, even though divines beyond suspicion pre- 
 side over the fallen. They are far too religious not to 
 be disgusted with the frantic excesses of a revival, and 
 they are far too well acquainted with history not to be 
 aware that " revivals " are but another form of "bac- 
 chanalia." When a preacher tells his congregation 
 that he saw lamb in a butcher's shop ticketed at eleven- 
 pence a pound, but that they may all have the Lamb 
 of God for nothing ; or when another ordained mounte- 
 bank tells us that salvation is like a plum-pudding, cut 
 and come again ; or when another informs his hearers 
 that the blood of Jesus Christ is like a postage stamp, 
 and will pass any letter to the throne of God, however 
 ill-written the direction, or dirty the envelope ; or when 
 again, parodying the fifty-first Psalm, he tells us that 
 Almighty God writes down our transgressions in a book, 
 and then hides them all by a big drop of the Saviour's 
 blood — are we really to let him alone because he utters 
 this in a pulpit, and because it is only the Gospel and 
 Almighty God that he is making game of? Are we 
 coolly to be told that this ribaldry is really far too sacred 
 for a satirist to touch ? It is not sacred at all ; it is 
 a disgusting and odious blasphemy. It is this kind of 
 thing that drives half the ignorant population into a 
 superstition little better than paganism, and the other 
 half into infidelity. 
 
 And so, again, with the smaller vices of society, and 
 especially of the religious world. The endless gossip 
 
ON SATIBE. 31 
 
 and backbiting, the eagerness to sacrifice everything, 
 private character and even truth itself, to the interests 
 of a sect or a party ; the habit of subordinating virtue 
 to a self-satisfied orthodoxy ; how are we to deal with 
 vices of this sort ? Are we really to let them alone ? 
 Is it nothing that a man's reputation is gossiped away 
 by a malicious meddler, who chooses to believe that his 
 malice is zeal for the Lord ? Does it make the faintest 
 difference to a man whose life has been embittered and 
 whose prospects have been blighted by the idle slanders 
 of some sanctified miscreant, that the irreparable wi-ong 
 was done in the name o£ conscience ? Can anybody 
 suggest a wrong that has not been done sometimes in 
 the name of conscience ? There is not one of the com- 
 mandments that has not been broken for conscience 
 sake ; men have lied for conscience sake, robbed for 
 conscience sake, murdered for conscience sake ; for 
 conscience sake nations have been plunged into war ; 
 all the horrors of the Inquisition were for the glory of 
 God ; and with a cool love of mere principle that rises 
 almost into sublimity, the Pope himself has, within the 
 last few months, from his tottering chair damned the 
 far larger part of the human race. Of course, when 
 gossips and slanderers are held up to well-desei-ved 
 contempt, they suddenly discover that it is extremely 
 wrong for anybody to disturb their repose. They think 
 it very unkind, and indisputably anti-Christian, in any 
 one, for Whatever reason, to wound their feelings. Very 
 likely. And if a tiger ate a cat that was watching for 
 a mouse, very likely the cat's feelings would be wounded. 
 Probably, also, though the Newgate hangman is n6t 
 unskilful, the worthy Miiller's feelings were somewhat 
 outraged. Picking oakum is a drearier business, no 
 
32 ON SATIRE. 
 
 doubt, than swindling one's neighbours. There is a 
 great deal of misery in the world ; and of course if we 
 had been consulted about the making of it, we should have 
 constructed it on very different principles. We were 
 not consulted, and there is nothing therefore left us but 
 within certain limits to determine on whom the misery 
 should fall. Shall it fall on the good or on the evil ? 
 On the robber, or on^ the robbed ? On the murderer, or 
 on his victim alone ? Is it not much more merciful to 
 scorch with ridicule, and hold up to universal detesta- 
 tion, the malicious slanderer, than to leave him to ruin 
 the happiness of a score of his neighbours ? 
 
 There is perhaps no nobler rule, either in Scripture 
 or anywhere else, than the rule, " Do unto others as ye 
 would that they should do unto you." And this is the 
 very rule that every honest satirist might print on his 
 title-page. For he might very well say to himself, "If 
 I were ever to fall into these evil habits that I mean to 
 satirise, I should thank anybody from the bottom of my 
 heart who would whip me out of them, and prevent my 
 doing irreparable mischief to my fellow- creatui-es ; I 
 would rather be held up to the scorn of the whole 
 world, than destroy the reputation and ruin the peace 
 of those who dwell securely by me. Very likely if I did 
 acquire those evil habits which now seem to me so- 
 accursed, I should at the same time become so blind to 
 my own truest interests, that I should wish to be left 
 alone to my sin and mischief. But that would not be 
 the desire of my own true self ; the true man in me 
 would be crying out for deliverance, however acute the 
 pain through .which deliverance might come. Now, 
 by anticipation, I ask for the needed -punishment ; I, 
 sober, appeal against myself drunk ; I, with my eyes 
 
ON SATIEE. 33 
 
 wide open, appeal against myself, a poor wretch blinded 
 by possible crime. If I yield myself up to folly and 
 vice, I beseech all good men to smite me, and it shall 
 be a kindness, yea, an excellent oil that shall not break 
 my head." He who has never felt, and who does not 
 feel, somewhat after this manner, has no business to be 
 a satirist. 
 
 Law and religion govern two totally different regions 
 of human life, the outward and the inward. Law is 
 concerned only with overt acts, rigidly defined and 
 strictly proved ; it cares nothing for motives, excepting 
 so far as outward acts are technically and legally allowed 
 to imply them. Murder implies malice ; and if there 
 be -no malice, its absence must be clearly proved. But 
 religion, on the other hand, and morality, which is a 
 part of religion, are concerned chiefly with motives, and 
 with outward acts chiefly as indications of that moral 
 character from which they spring. The malicious man 
 has offended against morality, though he may have been 
 unable to accomplish all the mischief that it was in his 
 heart to do. The slanderer is regarded as an evil-doer, 
 though he may have published no libel, nor come within 
 the danger of an action for defamation of character. 
 But it is plain that the law can punish only those 
 offences which the law has defined, and there must be 
 some other than legal punishment for those offences 
 which lie beyond the region of law. In many ways 
 has such punishment been inflicted. It has been in- 
 flicted, for instance, by the Church, which cuts off from 
 its communion those who refuse to live according to the 
 laWs of the divine family. It is punished by public 
 opinion, and the numerous excommunications of ordi- 
 nary society. "Nature has given for their defence, 
 
 D 
 
34 ON SATIRE. 
 
 hoi'ns to bulls, hoofs to horses, swiftness of foot to 
 hares, beauty to women," and to injured society, im- 
 penetrable forgetfulness. The vulgar, ungentlemanly 
 man nobody is obliged to recognise ; and he may be 
 compelled to live in utter loneliness, in the very midst 
 of his alienated friends. And so, also, at once for the 
 punishment of evil-doers, and the warning of those who 
 are tempted to become evil-doers, we have satire. The 
 extreme limits of its severity are those limits at which 
 the severity of the law must stop ; beyond those limits 
 the law will not suffer it to pass ; and beyond those 
 limits the law performs those duties with perfect effi- 
 ciency, which satire could never hope to discharge at 
 all. Satire may never become libellous ; but, on the 
 other hand, if men will persist in living so close to the 
 edge of crime, that it is almost impossible to describe 
 their character and lives without such language as would 
 be construed by law a libel, they must not complain if 
 the satirist should compensate himself and society for 
 being compelled to say less than the truth, by making 
 it perfectly obvious for whom what he does say is 
 intended. 
 
 After all, that which constitutes the bitterness, con- 
 stitutes also the value of satire ; and that is, its truth. 
 Take truth away, and whom does satire touch ? " 'Tis 
 a knavish piece of work, but what of that ? Your 
 majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not ; 
 let the galled jade vnnce, our withers are unwrung." 
 The honest women in Eome might have read, not 
 indeed without shame, but with a very hearty thank- 
 fulness, the sixth satire of Juvenal. It is only parasites 
 who feel offended when the meanness and servility of 
 parasites is held up to derision and contempt. A man 
 
ON SATIEE. 35 
 
 of high principle and undaunted courage never regards 
 your censure of sneaks and cowards as a personal affront. 
 And yet, on the other hand, what cause of complaint 
 have they, the poor galled jades who wince under your 
 satires ? You are really doing them a service, if they 
 only knew it. Hitherto, society has known only one 
 side of their characters, and has therefore formed but a 
 poor opinion of their versatility. So you kindly turn 
 them round and round for public inspection, and new 
 wonders and beauties are disclosed at every turn. If 
 the various sides are not very symmetrical, all you can say 
 is, that you did not make them, and you are very sorry 
 for it. It would surely be a great pity to leave people 
 to be frightened at an ass in a lion's skin, or worried by 
 a wolf in sheep's clothing. Strip off the skins, good 
 satirist, stick your long knife into the heart of the wolf, 
 and send the donkey back again to his thistles. 
 
 Still, though useful, and in a wicked world like ours, 
 necessary, it must be confessed that satire is the least 
 pleasing form of literature. It may be the fruit of love, 
 but it may also be appropriated by hate. It may be the 
 honesty of the righteous, but it may be employed also 
 by the malicious and cowardly. It deals with one side 
 only of human character and life, and that the worst 
 side; the side which sours men's tempers, and turns 
 them into those snarling dogs which, when they bark 
 articulately, are called cynic philosophers. The world 
 would be well rid of Diogenes, if he were drowned in his 
 own tub ; and Timon in his den is neither wiser nor 
 better than Timon in his palace. The satirist or the 
 writer of satirical fictions should write in that style but 
 seldom, only after long intervals devoted to the contempla- 
 tion of the good and true ; that so he may satirise more 
 
 d2 
 
36 ON SATIRE. 
 
 in grief than anger, and with a sincere desire not merely 
 to make the bad miserable, but to make them good. 
 Satire must always seem false to a loving spirit, and 
 even to any man of wide experience ; for there is more 
 good in the world than evil, more love than hatred, 
 more honest men than knaves, more of God than of the 
 devil. 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND/ 
 
 It is scarcely possible to imagine a stranger contrast 
 than that between the spirit of Mr. -Fronde's History t 
 and the spirit of the age of which he is the historian. 
 We scarcely realize how great is the advance of know- 
 ledge, the change in our methods of investigation and 
 canons of criticism, and the total alteration in the habits, 
 and judgments, and ideals of the English people since 
 the Tudor period, until some such history as Mr. Froude's 
 brings us face to face with that past which seems so 
 completely to have vanished away. Natural philosophy 
 has a region of its own, and is not compelled even so 
 much as to recognize those earlier efforts, which in com- 
 parison with modern discoveries and achievements are 
 scarcely worth remembering. Even metaphysics are so 
 separated from other departments of study that it is 
 thought possible to teach the philosophy of substance 
 and attribute, without so much as an indirect censure or 
 approval of the doctrine of transubstantiation. To the 
 astronomer or the chemist all religions are of equal im- 
 portance, or equally of no importance ; and the very 
 origin of species is discussed vnthout an allusion to the 
 
 * 
 
 f Fortnightly Review. 
 
 f " History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death 
 of Elizabeth." By J. A. FroudB) M.A., Vols. ix. andx. London: 
 liongmans, 1866. 
 
38 ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 
 
 Mosaic cosmogony. But the historian of the England 
 of Elizabeth finds himself among men to whom theo- 
 logical dogmas and ecclesiastical systems seemed to be 
 the only things worth regarding. It was not asked 
 whether men were good, or bad, true or treacherous ; it 
 was only beginning to be asked whether foreign alliances, 
 or domestic laws, were or were not for the good of the 
 nation. But the question which was always asked con- 
 cerning every individual, and evei-y policy, was this : How 
 is it related to religion — to the old creed of the Roman 
 Church, or the Reformed doctrines of Christ's gospel ? 
 The unmistakeable earnestness with which this question 
 was asked, even by men whose own characters were black 
 with every imaginable infamy, is one of the most 
 astounding marvels of all history. 
 
 " Through Christ," says Mr. Froude, " came charity and 
 mercy ; from theology came strife and hatred, and that fatal 
 root of bitterness of which our Lord spoke Himself in the 
 mournful prophecy, that He had not come to send peace on earth 
 but a sword. When His name and His words had been preached 
 for fifteen centuries, there were none found who could tolerate 
 difference of opinion on the operation of Baptism, or on the 
 nature of His presence in the Eucharist ; none, or at least none 
 but the hard-hearted cliildren of the world. The more rehgion 
 any man had, the more eager was he to put away by fire and sword 
 all those whose convictions differed from his own. 
 
 " The Reformation was the beginning of a new order of things. 
 The recognition that false dogmas had for many centuries been 
 violently intruded upon manldnd, and the consequent revolt 
 against the authority which imposed them, were in reahty a pro- 
 test against the dogmatic system, and an admission of the rights 
 of conscience. When the visible unity of the Church was once 
 broken, the multitude of the opinions which ensued compelled their 
 reciprocal toleration; and the experience that men of different per- 
 suasions can live together with mutual advantage and mutual 
 respect has imtwisted slowly the grasp of the theological fingers 
 from the human tliroat. The truth again begins to be felt, — thougb 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 39 
 
 as yet it can hardly be avowed, — that religion does not consist in 
 an assent to propositions ; that the essence of it is something 
 lyhioh is held alike by Catholic and Anglican, Arminian, Lutheran, 
 Calvimst, Samaritan, or Jew." * 
 
 This passage contains the grand moral of Mr. Froude's 
 histoi-y, while it also explains his singular impartiality. 
 There is indeed an impartiality which is destructive of 
 all real insight into the motives and characters of men, 
 and into the nature and tendency of great social and 
 poHtical movements. Such an impartiality degenerates 
 always into a cynical indifference, and turns history into 
 satire. No honest man can regard with equal approval, 
 high-spirited, self-sacrificing patriots, and the mean and 
 selfish cowards who have been ever eager to sell their 
 country for their own gain. No wise man can pretend 
 to be indifferent when he is called upon to judge be- 
 tween a policy or legislation which tends to promote the 
 general well-being of a people, and the wretched mis- 
 government which glorifies and enriches the few by 
 robbing and demoralising the great mass of society. 
 The great test of utility and that moral law to which the 
 test of utility has guided every thoughtful observer, can 
 no more be neglected without baseness in literature than 
 in life. Mr. Froude's sympathies are not only undis- 
 guisedly on the side of common goodness and common 
 honesty, but he writes almost as if he had come into 
 personal living intercourse with the princes, and states- 
 men, and soldiers of the Tudor period. It cannot be 
 doubted that to him Cecil is a personal friend, a man 
 whose reputation he would guard as carefully as his own. 
 It is plain, too, that he regards Elizabeth, in spite of all 
 
 'i' Froude, ix., p. 306. 
 
40 ELIZABETH AND HEE ENGLAND. 
 
 her weakness of character, and the strange twist in her 
 moral nature, which seemed to render it impossible /or 
 her to journey along a straight road anywhere, as a 
 grand heroic woman — the very centre of the new life and 
 movement of the Eeformation age. To him also John 
 Knox is a prophet of the living God ; and Mary Stuart, 
 in the deepest sense, an anti-Christ — almost an in- 
 carnate devil. Let his impartiality consist in this, 
 that he would no more hear false witness, on one side or 
 the other, than he would perjure himself to-morrow in a 
 common English witness box. He will "nothing ex- 
 tenuate, nor set down aught in malice;" and the reason 
 why he is able to maintain this strict justice is pre- 
 cisely this, that he has himself learned the lesson of the 
 Reformation — the lesson that religion is greater than 
 dogmas, and that men are to be judged by their works, 
 and not by their creeds. How hard it is to learn this 
 lesson can be realized only by those who have had to 
 fight their own way through bigotry and intolerance, and 
 who have found for themselves that even now the 
 English people owe their liberties, not to the Church, 
 but to the world ; not .to the convocation of the clergy, 
 but to the Commons' House of Parliament ; not to the 
 archbishops and bishops, but to the judges in the secular 
 courts. 
 
 The last two volumes of Mr. Froude's history embrace 
 only the short period of seven years ; and these seven 
 years were years not so much of revolution, producing by 
 a single effort clearly-defined results, as years of tran- 
 sition and growth. There was scarcely a single question 
 of vital importance which had even approached to a 
 solution. Whether England should be Catholic or Pro- 
 testant, and if Protestant whether Anglican or Puritan ■ 
 
ELIZABETH AND HEB ENGLAND. 41 
 
 whether the nation should adhere to the Spanish alliance 
 or seek the alliance of France ; whether the Protestants, 
 who were disturbing the peace of Europe, should be 
 helped or left to perish ; what should be done with Ireland ; 
 whether the Queen of Scots should be restored to her 
 throne or beheaded — no English statesman, during the 
 seven years of which Mr. Froude's last volumes contain 
 the history, could have answered these questions. Even 
 Cecil with a wisdom and integrity, an insight and a 
 foresight, quite unmatched by any other of Elizabeth's 
 statesmen, was frequently bewildered. And yet these 
 questions were so vital that each or all of them were but 
 another form of the one great question for the English 
 people. Shall there continue to be an English people at 
 all? 
 
 On the other hand — as Mr. Froude better than any 
 other historian has shown — the uncertainty arose, not 
 from the decay of English intellect and English god- 
 liness, but from the vitality of the English people. 
 There was no policy in those years of hesitation and 
 contradiction for which some good reason could not be 
 urged. The nation was growing ; but the new and the 
 old were so intimately and vitally connected that they 
 could not be torn asunder. Even among the rebels there 
 were men both honest and wise. Catholics and Protestants, 
 friends of the Queen of Scots, and friends of the Eegent, 
 and of the infant King. All could appeal to some sacred 
 precedent, or to the utility of change ; the inalienable 
 right of kings, or the yet more inalienable right of whole 
 nations ; the infallibility of the Church, or the divine 
 glory of human reason. With so much going and so 
 much coming, even the wisest could scarcely find their 
 way to their own true home. 
 
42 ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 
 
 And this may help us to understand the universal and 
 loathsome treachery of which every statesman of every 
 party was continually guilty. Alone among men, John 
 Knox refused to bow down and worship the spirit' of evil. 
 Doubtless the kingdoms of this world were to become 
 the kingdom of God and of His Christ ; but if Almighty 
 God in His Divine patience could wait through long 
 years for so great a triumph, much more could John 
 Knox. He would not tell a lie even to save a soul, nor 
 condescend to the treachery and dishonesty of the states- 
 men of his day even for the sake of the whole Scotch 
 nation. Cecil too, was a deceiver under protest. He 
 felt that he lived in the midst of diplomatic war, where- 
 in, all trust having been destroyed, treachery had become 
 impossible. But for the most part men revelled in 
 dishonesty, and lied as if lying were the final cause of 
 the faculty of speech. In the ordinary intercourse of 
 society no human being would be tolerated for a single 
 day who could condescend to the meannesses which were 
 practised, without remorse and without shame, by every 
 statesman in Europe in the reign of Elizabeth. Eliza- 
 beth herself was so stupendous a liar that even her own 
 best friends never knew when to believe her or when to 
 trust her. She lied to Leicester, she lied to Cecil, she 
 lied to the Council, she lied to the Parliament, she lied 
 to the Queen of Scots, she lied to the Eegent, she lied 
 to Maitland, she lied to Spain, and to France, and to 
 Austria and to the Pope; she lied right and left, thick 
 and thin, year after year, though her lying nearly cost 
 her her own throne, devastated Scotland with civil war, 
 and deluged France with the blood of the Huguenots. 
 Such was the spirit of the age, that, compared with the 
 Duke of Norfolk and Mary Stuart, compared even with 
 
ELIZABETH AND HEK ENGLAND. 43 
 
 the French and Spanish ambassadors, Elizabeth was 
 transparent and sincere. 
 
 Nevertheless, in the midst of treachery, and every kind 
 of crafty "bye-practices," there was also a sort of 
 honour, an excuse for fraud, a slow process of change 
 and growth, which made the wisdom of to-day the folly 
 of to-morrow. Even Maitland, one of the falsest of the 
 false men of that age, could urge apologies for his fickle- 
 ness and deceit, the force of which it is impossible to deny. 
 
 " 'You ask me why I have changed my mind,' he writes ta 
 Sussex. ' Have you never changed yours ? Those are not the 
 wisest men who remain always of the same opinion. The sMlful 
 sailing master applies his course as the wind and weather drive 
 him. You speak of philosophy ; I have none of it. Yet if I 
 turned my mind that way, I would not study it after the intract- 
 able discipline of the Stoics, but would rather become a student 
 in the ' school where it is taught that wise men's minds must be 
 led by probable reasons. That same firm, certain, unchangeable, 
 and undoubting persuasion, which is requisite in matters of faith 
 must not be required in matters of policy ; and good and evil are 
 not such in themselves, but in their relation to other things. 
 You say, persons, cause, and matter are the same. It is not so, 
 for time has altered many things. The affections of men are 
 changed ia both realms, and the persons are altered. The person 
 of the late Regent was a circumstance of no small moment. 
 And severity was a matter which might well vary only with the 
 change of time. To sequestrate the Queen for a season might be 
 required ; to keep her all her days in prison would be rigour in- 
 tolerable. Were it true that I had advised more hard deaUng 
 yet the substance of things is not changed by our opinion. They 
 are not good or ill, rigorous or equitable, because we think them 
 so. I. might have been wrong then, and I might be right now.' " * 
 
 I might have been wrong then, and I might be right 
 now. For in that time of change, and clashing 
 interests, and battling creeds, new elements were con- 
 tinually presenting themselves to vitiate the most 
 
 * Maitland to Sussex, (condensed.) Froude, x., 90. 
 
44 ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 
 
 cautious conclusions of the wisest statesmen. The 
 moral law of diplomacy is hard to discoyer, and harder 
 to apply ; but it may perhaps be admitted that when the 
 intercourse of states is empty of all trust, when it can 
 safely be carried on only by the aid of intercepting 
 letters, by spies, by the rack and the dungeon, and by 
 universal suspicion, it had better come wholly to an end. 
 
 Yet if the intercourse does continue, the man who 
 cam/not be trusted otight not to be trusted ; if there are 
 plots, there inust be counter plots, and craft must be 
 outwitted by craft. 
 
 Perhaps the sincerest part of Elizabeth's conduct was 
 her treatment of Mary Stuart. That treatment of her 
 unhappy rival was indeed full of inconsistencies; but 
 they were the result of a consistent desire to save the 
 Queen of Scotland from the consequences of her own 
 baseness. It is not wonderful that a princess who fas- 
 cinated every man — save one — who ever came into her 
 presence, should have had power from that scaifold, 
 which was the dark exit from her long captivity, to fas- 
 cinate posterity. Sentiment, too, is ever more abundant, 
 easier, and more luxurious than reason ; and the portrait 
 of Mary Stuart is to be seen over the altar of a Roman 
 Catholic Churcfi. Political prejudice, and religious 
 bigotry have long ago transformed the woman, who was 
 perhaps one of the worst women that ever lived, into a 
 saint and a martyr ; and it is a hard and invidious task to 
 show her to the world as she really was. But the fame of 
 the Queen of Scots is the infamy of Elizabeth, and to 
 canonize Mary Stuart is to condemn the Eeformation. 
 
 It is hopeless to fight against the prejudices of those 
 who determine the facts of history by their theological 
 preferences ; they cannot understand the Eeformation, 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 45 
 
 because they are in the very position of the men who 
 made the Reformation necessary, and who were its 
 bitterest foes. But it may be worth while to prove, as 
 Mr. Froude has proved with an almost surperfluous 
 completeness, that as Mary was false to everything else, 
 false to every human being with whom she had to do, so 
 she was false also to the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 Her first treachery to her religion was in that foulest 
 portion of her history when she was wallowing in the 
 mire of lust and cruelty with Bothwell. It was no un- 
 pardonable sin that with that profligate ruffian she had 
 been the murderer of her own husband — that she had 
 lured the weak unhappy wretch to death by tender 
 caresses, and the kisses of Judas Iscariot. To affirm the 
 Catholic dogmas, or to take due part in the Catholic 
 ceremonies, was counted in those days a surer road to 
 heaven than the keeping of God's commandments. 
 Mary had no religion, but she had a vei7 decided pre- 
 ference for the Roman make-believe; and if she was 
 sure of anything, she was sure of this — that she would 
 be justly damned if she disobeyed the Pope, or prohibited 
 the mass. And yet she was willing to do this — and to 
 do it not for the peace of Scotland, not in the spirit of 
 far-seeing toleration, or the wisdom of political expe- 
 diency, but only for the sake of carnal dalliance with 
 a worthless scoundrel. Bothwell had lost all hope of 
 securing the favour of the Catholic party ; it was needful 
 therefore to bid the higher for the favour of the Pro- 
 testants. For his sake, therefore, the queen was willing 
 to dishonour the Catholic ritual, and to be married by a 
 Calvinistic service. She revoked all licences to use the 
 Catholic service ; and declared that for the future, the 
 Act of Religion of 1560, prohibiting the mass to every 
 
46 ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 
 
 one, should be strictly maintained. What need to care, 
 even for the damnation of every sonl in Scotland, if only 
 she might be permitted to toy with Bothwell ? 
 
 At every stage of her dark, downward journey she was 
 equally ready, for her own interests, and for the sweet- 
 ness of revenge, to forsake the old faith ; and to accept 
 any faith, or no faith at all, as might best serve her turn. 
 At Bolton Castle, while as yet she was rather the guest 
 than the prisoner of the too patient and credulous Eliza- 
 beth, the fervour of her Protestant piety had almost 
 deceived Sir Francis KnoUys. " Surely," he wrote to 
 Cecil, "this Queen doth seem outwardly not only to 
 favour the form but also the chief articles of the Gospel, 
 namely, justification by faith only ; and she heareth the 
 ■faults of Papistry revealed by preaching or otherwise, 
 with contented ears, and gentle and weak replies."* She 
 consented, if Elizabeth would reinstate her in her 
 realm, to abandon the mass in Scotland and receive the 
 Common Prayer after the form of England. Of course 
 she was lying. " The Queen," she wrote to De Silva, 
 " is using her advantage * * * * to force me and 
 the poor Catholics to agree to a change of religion. 
 ***** Yqi- my own part, I would sooner be 
 murdered, "t At that time, by Papists, even Papist lies 
 .were deemed better than Protestant honesty; but that 
 time has passed away. And surely now she can be 
 scarcely worth the homage of honest men of any creed, 
 who was ready at any moment to change her " religion," 
 and to compel her subjects to change theirs. It is not 
 of such material that saints and martyrs have been made. 
 
 * KnoUys to Cecil. Froude, ix., p. 269. 
 ■\ Queen of Scots toDe Silva. MSS. Simancas, Froude, ix., p. 268. 
 
ELIZABETH AND HEK ENGLAND. 47 
 
 And yet it was for this woman that, with a consistency 
 which was compelled to assume all manner of incon- 
 sistent forms, Elizabeth was continually endangering 
 her own throne and risking her own life. Nothing can 
 exceed the reckless, irritating despotism of the English 
 Queen; and in nothing is the impartiality of Mr. 
 Eroude's history more remarkable than in his unvar- 
 nished narrative of Elizabeth's perversity. He clearly 
 regards her with favour and admiration, and yet he 
 leaves upon his readers the just impression that the 
 Queen, "had greatness thrust upon her;" that every 
 one of her glories is in fact the glory of her' wisest 
 ministers ; that if she had been left to herself, the 
 Reformation would have been wrecked, and she herself 
 assassinated. She had no princely grace ; she neither 
 knew when to be firm nor when to yield. She, was, in- 
 deed, " semper eadem ; " but she was the same, because 
 she< was consistently inconsistent ; and nothing in her 
 character or government was unchangeable but her 
 mutability. 
 
 This despotic perverseness was perhaps least unami- 
 able, though by no means least dangerous, in Elizabeth's 
 treatment of the Queen of Scots ; yet even here, it must 
 not be forgotten, that Elizabeth did not regard her rival 
 only as a near kinswoman, or a confiding suppliant, but 
 rather as an anointed sovereign, in whose cause every 
 sovereign had a personal interest. The right to rebel 
 could never be bounded by the Scotch frontier; and 
 Elizabeth thought far more of the danger of rebellion, 
 than of the fact that the deadliest danger of rebellion was 
 in Mary Stuart herself. 
 
 When we hear so much of Elizabeth's nobleness, and 
 of the queenly grace with which she made concessions, 
 
48 ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 
 
 when concession was necessary, it is worth while to 
 poiilt out under what circumstances, and in what man- 
 ner, she did concede, and how and when she displayed 
 her nobleness. It is, perhaps, to begin ^ath, an in- 
 ferior kind of virtue to need to concede. To avoid a 
 conflict is surely a safer and a more dignified behaviour. 
 Nor can it be denied, that when Elizabeth quarrelled 
 vyith her parliaments and her ministers, they were in 
 almost every case clearly right, and she was clearly 
 wrong. It is no extravagant praise to affirm, that at the 
 last moment, when she was brought face to face with 
 utter destruction, she preferred a pretty speech to sheer 
 ruin. The parliaments of Henry VIII. were exceedingly 
 numerous ; Elizabeth's parliaments were exceedingly 
 few. They were called together reluctantly, they were 
 hindered in their debates, they were grossly insulted at 
 their dissolution. Only one parliament was called 
 during the seven years, the history of which is com- 
 prised in Mr. Fronde's last two volumes. It was called 
 at a time of great danger, when a formidable rebellion 
 had just been crushed, and when the treasons and 
 crimes of the chief traitor, Mary Stuart, had been proved 
 beyond all possibility of doubt. Yet even that parlia- 
 ment was dismissed with coldest thanks ; and the only 
 concession that could be wrung from the Queen was the 
 too long deferred execution of Norfolk. The Commons 
 knew what the Queen of Scots really was — " a bosom 
 serpent." The very least that faithful subjects could 
 desire was her attainder. But Elizabeth stopped their 
 proceedings. 
 
 " Her answer has not been preserved, but it was so dangerously 
 unsatisfactory, that Burghley became dangerously ill with anxi- 
 ety. The great minister would yield neither to objections nor to 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER BNGtLAND. 49 
 
 sickness. He could not stand, but he was carried in his litter to 
 parliament. He was carried in his litter to the Queen's presence. 
 He strained every nerve to move her, but he still failed. The 
 Commons had expressed impatience that Norfolk was left un- 
 punished ; Leicester informed Walsingham that he saw no like- 
 lihood of the Duke's execution.'' * 
 
 The agitation of the House of Commons continued, 
 and the Queen was compelled to yield so far as to pro- 
 mise to receiye a deputation from the two Houses, and 
 to hear what they had to say. They said what they 
 believed, and what they wished ; and what they believed 
 Elizabeth knew to be true, and what they desired she 
 knew to be necessai-y. And yet she would not, and did 
 not yield. 
 
 " She admitted that the course which the Committee recom- 
 mended was ' the best and surest way.' She was perfectly aware 
 that, so long as the Queen of Scots lived, she would never her- 
 self be secure ; yet partly from weakness, partly from the peculiar 
 tenderness which from first to last had characterised her dealings 
 with her cousin, partly, it may be, from an instinctive foresight of 
 the hard construction of posterity, she shrank from granting what 
 she could no longer positively refuse. She thanked the Houses 
 for their care for her safety. She asked them only to ' defer their 
 proceedings' for a time, and pass a less extreme measure mean- 
 while. The law officers of the Crown, she said, could contrive 
 means of evading the difficulties which the Committee had raised."-f- 
 
 " To defer for a time only " — when parliaments were 
 fewer and fewer, and the very necessity for ending the 
 delay would be certain to defer the Parliament ! ' ' Partly 
 from weakness — partly, partly," etc., etc. But wholly the 
 Queen denied the only thing the Parliament cared about 
 her conceding — she abandonedher best friends to the peril 
 of their lives, and her worst enemy she sent away in peace. 
 
 • Froude, x. 362. f Ibid. 365. 
 
60 ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 
 
 But about this " concession " — though it is impos- 
 sible to discover what was conceded — there was so much 
 . grace, that the Parliament was not lectured like a crowd 
 of impudent, meddlesome school-boys. Elizabeth's 
 earlier Parliaments had been far less fortunate. The 
 Parliament, for instance, of 1566, had ventured to advise 
 the Queen's marriage. It is one of the penalties of 
 royal dignity, that kings and queens must marry for 
 expediency, and not merely for love. Elizabeth herseK 
 was disgracefully entangled with Amy Eobsart's husband, 
 and coquetted with every marriageable prince in Europe, 
 till she had made both herself and them a [laughing- 
 stock. But she could not bear the advice, the affec- 
 tionate entreaties of her own people. Thus gracefully, 
 therefore, she conceded to her Parliament of 1566 : — 
 
 " On the afternoon of the 5th of November, ' by her Highness's 
 special commandment,' twenty-five lay peers, the Bishops of 
 Durham and London, and thirty members of the Lower House, 
 presented themselves at the palace of Westminster. 
 
 " The address was read by Bacon. 
 
 " After grateful acknowledgments of the general government of 
 the Queen, the two Houses desired, first, to express their wish that 
 her Highness would be pleased to marry, ' where it should please 
 her, with whom it should please her, and as soon as it should 
 please her.' 
 
 " Further, as it was possible, that her Highness might die with- 
 out children, her faithful subjects were anxious to know more 
 particularly the future prospects of the realm. Much as they 
 wished to see her married, the settlement of the succession was 
 even more important ' carrying with it such necessity that with- 
 out it they could not see how the safety of her royal person, or the 
 preservation of her imperial realm and crown, could be or should 
 be sufficiently and certainly provided for." ' Her late iUness (the 
 Queen had been unwell again), the amazedness, that most men of 
 tmderstanding were by fruit of that sickness brought unto,' and 
 the opportunity of making a definite arrangement, while Parlia- 
 
ELIZABETH AND HEB ENGLAND. 51 
 
 ment was sitting, were the motives which induced them to be 
 more urgent than they would othen^ise have cared to be. His- 
 toi-y and precedent alike recommended a speedy decision. They 
 hoped that she might live to have a child of her own ; but she was 
 mortal, and should she die before her subjects knew to whom 
 their allegiance was due, a eivU war stared them in the face. 
 The decease of a prince leaving a realm without a government 
 was the most frightful disaster which could befall the common- 
 wealth ; with the vacancy of the throne all writs were suspended, 
 all commissions were void, law itself was dead. Her Majesty 
 was not ignorant of these things. If she refused to provide a 
 remedy, ' it would be a dangerous burden before God upon her 
 Majesty.' They had therefore felt it to be their duty to present 
 this address ; and on their knees they implored her to consider it, 
 and to give them an answer before the session closed. 
 
 "Elizabeth had prepared her answer. As soon as Bacon 
 ceased, she drew herself up and spoke as follows : — 
 
 " ' If the order of your cause had matched the weight of your 
 matter, the one might well have craved reward, and the other 
 much the sooner be satisfied. But when I caU. to miud how far 
 from dutiful care, yea, rather, how nigh a traitorous trick this 
 humbling cast did spring, I muse how men of wit can so hardly 
 use that gift they hold. I marvel not much that bridleless colts 
 do not know their rider's hand whom bit of kingly rein did never 
 snaffle yet. Whether it was fit that so great a cause as this should 
 have had this beginning in such a public place as that, let it be 
 well weighed. Must all evil bodings that might be recited be 
 found little enough to hap to my share? Was it weU meant, 
 think you, that those that knew how fit this matter was to be 
 granted by the prince, would prejudicate their prince in aggrava- 
 ting the matter ? So all their arguments tended to my careless 
 care of this my dear realm.' 
 
 " So far she spoke from a form which remains in her own 
 handwriting. She continued perhaps in the same style, but her 
 words only remain in the Spanish of De SUva : — 
 
 " ' She was not surprised at the Commons,' she said ; ' they had 
 small experiences, and had acted like boys ; but that the Lords 
 should have gone along with them, she confessed had filled her 
 with wonder. There were some among them who had placed 
 their swords at her disposal when her sister was upon the throne, 
 and had invited her to seize the Crown ; she knew but too well 
 
 e2 
 
52 ELIZABETH AND HEE ENGLAND. 
 
 that if she allowed a successor to be named, there would be found 
 men who would approach him or her with the same encourage- 
 ment to disturb the peace of the realm. If she pleased she could 
 name the persons to whom she alluded. When time and circum- 
 stances would allow, she would see to the matter of their petition 
 before they asked her ; she would be sorry to be forced into doing 
 anything which in reason and justice she was bound to do ; and 
 she concluded with a request that her words should not be mis- 
 interpreted.' 
 
 " So long as she was speaking to the lay peers, she controlled 
 her temper, but her passion required a safety valve, and she 
 rarely lost an opportunity of insulting and affronting her bishops. 
 
 " Turning sharp round where Grindal and Pilkington were 
 standing — ' And you, doctors,' she said — it was her pleasure to 
 ignore their right to a higher title, — ' you, I understand, make 
 long prayers about this business. One of you dared to say in 
 times past that I and my sister were bastards ; and you must 
 needs be interfering in what does not concern you. Go home and 
 amend your own hves, and set an honest example in your families. 
 The lords in parliament should have taught you to know your 
 places ; but if they have forgotten their places, I will not forget 
 mine. Did I choose I might make the impertinence of the whole 
 set of you an excuse to withdraw my promise to marry ; but for 
 the realm's sake I am resolved that I will marry, and I will take 
 a husband that will not be to the taste of some of you. I have 
 not married hitherto out of consideration to you, but it shall be 
 done now, and you who have been so urgent with me wiU find 
 the effects of it to your cost. Think you, the prince who will be 
 my consort will feel himself safe with such as you, who thus dare 
 to thwart and cross your natural Queen ? '" 
 
 " She turned on her heel and sailed out of the hall gf audience, 
 vouchsafing no other word." * 
 
 Elizabeth was certainly wiser than the Stuarts, for she 
 preferred her life to her obstinacy, and always kept her 
 head at a safe distance from the block and the axe. 
 But in spite of all her wisdom, she contrived to irritate 
 every class of her subjects, and lived in constant peril of 
 
 * Froude, viii. 313-316. 
 
ELIZABETH AND HEB ENGLAND. 53 
 
 assassination. Mr. Froude has failed to show a single 
 instance in which Elizabeth took the right course in 
 any dangerous crisis except upon compulsion. A ruler 
 may be one who has the actual power and wisdom to 
 command men, a true leader of the people, taking 
 always the initiative, and by the divine right of a 
 superior genius treating statesmen, even of the highest 
 order, as the mere ministers of his royal pleasure. On 
 the other hand, a king may be what we call a consti- 
 tuted sovereign, not leading his people but being led by 
 them ; ruled by his ministers, rather than ruling them. 
 Such a king will be spared both the glory and the re- 
 sponsibility of the highest royalty. But Elizabeth 
 belonged to neither of these classes ; she could not rule, 
 and she would suffer nobody to rule her ; she was con- 
 tinually opposing her most discreet advisers, and yet she 
 would take no responsibility upon herself. There was 
 not a single department of the Grovernment in which she 
 did not " meddle and muddle." She was no doubt 
 economical, but even her economy was both politically 
 and morally mischievous. So beggarly was her parsi- 
 mony, that when the fugitive Queen of Scots appealed 
 to her princely benevolence for fitting clothing, Eliza- 
 beth sent her two torn shifts, two pieces of black velvet, 
 and two pairs of shoes. Even Sir Francis KnoUys was 
 obliged for shame to shield his mistress by saying that 
 he thought " her Highness's maid had mistaken, and 
 had sent things necessary for such a maid-servant as she 
 was herself." Mary Stuart in a beggar's rags would 
 have been more fascinating than Elizabeth in her 
 Queen's robes ; for, in spite of all her artifices, there was 
 a sort of genuineness about her that could well dispense 
 with the shows and trappings of royalty. The couple of 
 
54 ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 
 
 torn shifts, therefore, were a comparatively harmless 
 meanness, but it was seldom indeed that the Queen of 
 England's parsimony failed to produce the bitterest 
 fruit. . After the Northern rebellion she alienated the 
 common people by hanging all the poor misguided 
 rabble of conspirators, and sparing the lives of the far 
 more guilty leaders, whose confiscated lands might help 
 to replenish her treasury. Her ministers never won 
 fortunes in her service ; they were permitted only the 
 doubtful honour of wasting them. She sent her viceroys 
 to Ireland, and bade them conquer and civiHze the wild 
 savages. But, though she urged them, and even com- 
 manded them on their allegiance to undertake the cost- 
 liest and most perilous work to which they could be 
 appointed, she would give them neither soldiers nor 
 money, nor even genuine thanks for the successes which 
 they had achieved at their own personal risk. Her 
 officers on the Scottish border were utterly distracted by 
 her impracticable caprices; so little did she know her 
 own mind, that for the most part her orders were counter- 
 manded even more swiftly than it would have been pos- 
 sible to begin to execute them. The Scotch lords hated 
 her, King's party and Queen's party equally distrusted 
 her. Men like Maitland despised and played with her, 
 and openly threatened that they would make the Queen 
 of England whine like a whipped hound. Her self- 
 willed obstinacy deluged Scotland with blood, and was at 
 the bottom of all the discontent of her own subjects. In- 
 directly she was the cause even of the infernal massacre 
 on the eve of St. Bartholomew. 
 
 After that dreadful carnage the people would have torn 
 the French treaty to shreds, driven the ambassador out 
 of the country, and flung defiance at the whole French 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 55 
 
 nation ; and it was not until the middle of September 
 that even the cautious Queen herself could admit the 
 ambassador to an audience. 
 
 " The Coxirt was at Woodstock, on it* way from Warwick to 
 Windsor. The whole council was collected. Bedford and Bacon, 
 though both unwell, were particularly sent for. Queen, ministers, 
 attendants, were all in mourning ; and when La Mothe Fenelon 
 was introduced, he was received in solemn silence. On such 
 occasions the littleness of Elizabeth's character entirely dis- 
 appeared, and the imperial majesty of her nobler nature pos- 
 sessed her wholly. If any misgiving crossed her mind on 
 her own past proceedings, she showed no signs of it. She rose 
 with a grave but not unkind expression. She drew La Mothe 
 aside into a window, and asked if the dreadful news she had 
 heard could possibly be true. La Mothe Fenelon, who was by 
 this time perfect in his lesson, produced the story of the 
 admiral's conspiracy, the plot for the surprise of the court, the 
 king's danger, and the necessity for a desperate remedy in a 
 desperate case. 
 
 " Elizabeth did not say that she disbelieved him ; but if the 
 charge was true, the king, she said, had brought a stain upon his 
 reputation, from which she had hoped he would have been able 
 to clear himself. She had persuaded herself that the miserable 
 scenes in Paris had risen from some extraordinary accident which 
 time would explain ; but it appeared now, from what La Mothe 
 had told her, that the king had himself sanctioned an insurrection 
 in which thousands of innocent persons had lost their Uves. 
 
 " The ambassador explained, protested, equivocated. He 
 expressed a hope, that at least the friendship between the two 
 countries would not be disturbed. 
 
 " The Queen replied, coldly, that she feared a king who had 
 abandoned his subjects might desert his allies. She could only 
 hope that for his own sake he would produce evidence of the 
 alleged conspiracy, and would protect such of the Protestants as 
 had no share in it. 
 
 " La Mothe, to turn the subject, said that the Queen of France 
 was near her confinement, and he ventured to remind Elizabeth 
 that she had promised to be godmother to the chUd. 
 
 " She told him that she had intended to send to Paris on that 
 occasion the most honourable embassy that had ever left the 
 
56 ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 
 
 shores of England. She felt now that she could trust no one 
 whom she valued in a country where his life would he unsafe. 
 " With these words she left him."* 
 
 " All her littleness," on such occasions, Elizabeth may 
 or may not have "lost;" but most assuredly she was 
 only too far from having arrived at greatness. It was 
 well enough for the court to be in mourning, but the 
 English Queen and nobles should have mourned over 
 English treachery even more than over the fiendish 
 cruelty of France. The fate of Huguenots and Ca- 
 tholics had been so evenly balanced that a mere breath 
 might have turned the scale on either side. So far as 
 Elizabeth could see, the stability of her own throne and 
 the Eeformed religion all over Europe depended on the 
 French marriage, or at the least on a French treaty. 
 The Queen-mother was eager for the English alliance, 
 and the aid of England would in all likelihood have 
 secured the liberties of the Protestant subjects both of 
 France and Spain. To the utter despair of her wisest 
 counsellors, in her OAvn mere caprice, in the infatuated 
 stupidity of her own self-will, EHzabeth seized that very 
 moment for treating secretly with Alva, and in a few 
 short days the streets of every large French town ran 
 deep with Huguenot blood. 
 
 The massacre of St. Bartholomew was, after all, but a 
 ghastly example of a bigotry and intolerance which, in 
 the time of Elizabeth, were almost universal. The hands 
 neither of French nor English Protestants were unstained 
 with blood. The English seas swarmed with pirates : 
 ships of Spain by hundi-eds were captured, and their 
 crews flung into the sea ; Spanish gentlemen were 
 
 * Froude, x. 418, 419. 
 
ELIZABETH AND HEB ENGLAND. 57 
 
 publicly sold as slaves in the market-place of Dover. 
 The new Israel, like the old one, was spoiling the 
 Egyptians ; and unless he were a British subject, no 
 Catholic's life was safe. Even in Ireland men, women, 
 and children were butchered by thousands, merely that 
 their Saxon rulers might have " some killing." It was 
 impossible that a whole people should unlearn by a 
 single effort the bloody lessons which had been taught 
 them for centuries under the name of the religion of 
 Christ. 
 
 Elizabeth's ecclesiastical government was, if possible, 
 more unsatisfactory and irritating than her secular rule. 
 She manifested on all occasions the same headstrong 
 wilfulness, never yielding till the last moment — never 
 yielding with grace. From her suicidal tenderness, 
 towards the Catholics, she was being constantly terrified 
 by the discovery of their incurable treachery ; but she 
 utterly abhorred the Puritans, and she lost no oppor- 
 tunity of pouring her contempt upon her own bishops. 
 It is by no means clear that she had any strong religi- 
 ous convictions or fixed belief. It is quite plain that she 
 was anxious to make the difference between the old and 
 the Eeformed religion as slight as possible, and to retain 
 at least the possibility of a reconciliation to the Roman 
 See. It is, above all, certain that she dearly loved 
 power and the display of power. 
 
 Yet, apart from the lessons of history, apart from the 
 fact that even now there are comparatively few who per- 
 ceive the absurdity, it would have seemed incredible that 
 any human being could expect to control thought and 
 dictate a religion to those who are capable of under- 
 standing what religion means. Elizabeth would have 
 no two religions in her realms. People might believe 
 
58 ELIZABETH AND HEB ENGLAND. 
 
 what they chose, hut she would determine for them 
 what they should pretend to believe. They might have 
 what they liked in secret, but in public they should only 
 utter what the Queen approved. And this Elizabeth con- 
 sidered to be a true and sufficient toleration ! This 
 indeed is, and must be, the necessary condition of the 
 existence of an Established Church; and the consequence 
 has been that every reformation, both of doctrine and 
 life, has either begun or ended outside the Establish- 
 ment. 
 
 When an Oxford Professor is to be heard addressing, 
 amid hearty cheers, the constituents of the " Society for 
 the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and 
 Control," we need not wonder that an historian should 
 write freely his honest convictions about the ecclesiasti- 
 cal system which we owe to Elizabeth, and the sort of 
 men which that system produces. 
 
 " Of all types of human beings," says Mr. Froude, "who were 
 generated by the English Reformation, men Kke Whitgift are 
 the least interesting. There is something in the constitution of 
 the Estabhshment which forces them into the administration of 
 it ; yet, but for the statesmen to whom they refused to listen, and 
 the Puritans whom they endeavoured to destroy, the old religion 
 would have come back on the country like a returning tide. The 
 Pxiritans would have furnished new martyrs; the statesmen 
 through good and evil, would have watched over liberty ; but the 
 High Church clergy would have slunk back into conformity or 
 have dwindled to their proper insignificance. The country knew 
 its interests, and their high-handed intolerance had to wait tiU 
 more quiet times ; but they came back to power when the chances 
 of a Catholic revolution were buried in the wreck of the Armada, 
 and they remaiued supreme till they had once more wearied the 
 world with them, and brought a king and an archbishop to the 
 scaffold." * 
 
 * Froude, x. 117. 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 59 
 
 Three "types of human beings" were generated by 
 the English Eeformation. To many it brought the 
 relief which the opening of gaols would bring to the 
 criminal classes. Old restraints were removed, and new 
 baiTiers against crime and immorality were not yet pro- 
 vided. When the ancient landmarks were taken away, 
 and while the true boundaries were still undetermined, 
 it seemed impossible to trespass. Every man had 
 become a law unto himself ; while the example of re- 
 bellion against all that was most reverend was set by the 
 highest and noblest in the land, and in the most sacred 
 region of life. There poured over England a gi-eat flood 
 of immorality and vice ; the people became so godless 
 and profane that even the purest of the Eeformers, such 
 men, for instance, as Latimer, looked on in horror at 
 the work of their own hands. It seemed to such men 
 (to quote one of Latimer's own quaint figures) as if the 
 devil himself were the only true bishop in England : 
 always at his post — ever working. Yet, in all this, the 
 Eeformation brought its own cure. It produced a new 
 code of duty — ^a, new ideal of perfection ; its one great 
 lesson was personal, individual responsibility; it brought 
 every human spirit face to face with God. In the reign 
 of ElizaTjeth the good seed was bearing fruit; and, in 
 spite of cruelty and craft, buccaneering and ruthless 
 slaughtering, the conscience of England was becoming 
 clear, and moral worth was taking the place of ecclesi- 
 astical properness. 
 
 But while many welcomed the Eeformation only be- 
 cause it removed old barriers, there were others who 
 were seeking, with the utmost earnestness, for new and 
 better boundaries. They had as yet no notion that, in 
 matters of divine truth, every boundary is but a gua- 
 
60 ELIZABETH AND HEK ENGLAND. 
 
 rantee for falsehood. The human faculties admit of our 
 receiving even a revelation from God only in many separate 
 pieces and in many different forms. The very life which 
 followed the law is followed itself by the spirit ; and there 
 is ever in the future " the Christ that is to be." Every 
 council and every creed is a confession of the fallibility 
 of an earlier council and the insufficiency of an earlier 
 creed. Revolutions of doctrine and ritual within the 
 Church itself have been more numerous and more radi- 
 cal than those which have broken up the Church into 
 rival battling sects. The Puritans fully believed that, 
 instead of an ever-receding horizon, they were advancing 
 to the ultimate limit of all truth concerning God and His 
 relations to man. Nevertheless they were advancing. 
 To that limit, and not to Queen Elizabeth's articles, 
 they were making their way. And as to believing one 
 thing and pretending to believe another — as to know- 
 ing the truth and holding their peace about it — they 
 " could not but speak the things which they had heard 
 and seen." They might become martyrs — nay, alas ! 
 hating the false, and despairing of the true, they might 
 too easily have become utterly godless, deeming God 
 Himself, as Maitland deemed Him, a " Bogie of the 
 nursery," — but neither by threats nor blandishments, 
 bribes nor persecution, could they ever have been trans- 
 formed into Anglican bishops. 
 
 The Establishment itself, as an Establishment, was 
 and is too easily perverted into a direct premium 
 on dishonesty ; and in the reign of Elizabeth it demo- 
 ralized the Church. It could contain only the feeble or 
 the dishonest ; and it is easy enough to foresee the issue 
 of a battle between wise serpents and harmless doves. 
 The Catholics and Puritans were alike persecutors, but 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 61 
 
 they both persecuted for God. There was a kind of heroic 
 glory even in their cruelties, and what they inflicted on 
 others they were ready themselves to suffer. But the 
 clergy of the Establishment persecuted for themselves, 
 with the contemptible spitefulness of slinking cowards. 
 
 The attempt to introduce the English Church system 
 into Scotland and Ireland was utterly preposterous. 
 The Irish were too savage to resist the injustice, except 
 after the manner of savages. In Scotland the resistance 
 was at once more civilized and more complete. But the 
 mad tyranny of thrusting a new-born religion upon a 
 reluctant people cost thousands of lives, and kindled a 
 burning hatred that has never even yet been quenched. 
 
 The Anglican Establishment had not a single claim 
 upon the acceptance of the nation. It was but one 
 single phase of the rapidly changing thought and feeling 
 of the age. It had the recommendation neither of 
 antiquity, nor of complete reconstruction, nor of the 
 general assent of the people. In doctrine and ritual it 
 was neither Henry's nor Edward's ; while already the 
 better minds both in Scotland and England had passed 
 far beyond it. If one could bid a liquid island stagnate 
 in the very middle of a rushing stream, that stagnant 
 pool with the living, sparkling waters all around it might 
 be the very emblem of Elizabeth's Church — death in 
 life, an artificial and deceitful fixedness, in the midst of 
 change, a pretended independent perfection refusing to 
 be identified with the past or to grow into a nobler 
 future. A Church which required its ministers not to 
 believe, but only to conform, was sure to attract to its 
 communion the least worthy of mankind. But a far 
 worse result has been the consecration of dishonesty. 
 It has been judged a virtue not to think, not to prove all 
 
62 ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 
 
 things, not to ask the questions which might provoke in- 
 convenient replies. Even now, though so many breaches 
 have been made through the walls with which Parlia- 
 ment has sought to defend the Church of God, — when 
 articles are signed and oaths sworn with a well-under- 
 stood reservation, and when ecclesiastical law is either 
 so obsolete or so uncertain that with the most moderate 
 caution a beneficed clergyman may be a law unto him- 
 self — even now a minister of the Anglican Establish- 
 ment can neither enquire with safety, nor abstain from 
 enquiry without dishonour. 
 
 Mr. Froude's history is not only derived from original 
 contemporary sources, but he has introduced into his 
 own work numerous and lengthy quotations from the 
 letters and State papers on which his conclusions are 
 based. At the cost of what may seem to some readers 
 occasional tediousness, this very greatly increases the 
 value of the history. The very quaintness of the 
 language is itself an attraction; and the actual words of 
 Elizabeth or Mary, Cecil, or the Bishop of Koss, are 
 far more satisfactory than any mere summary of what 
 might seem to Mr. Froude to be their meaning. Even 
 readers who are in the habit of verifying references are 
 glad to be spared trouble ; while, for general readers, 
 notes and appendices might as well remain unwritten. 
 Many of the sources of information of which Mr. Fronde 
 has availed himself are moderately familiar and accessible; 
 while others, and especially the Spanish ones, are here 
 employed for the first time. They are exceedingly 
 valuable ; often confirming by trustworthy, independent 
 testimony what was hitherto scarcely sufficiently proven, 
 and in some instances revealing new facts. 
 
 The matter of chief interest in the new volumes is 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 63 
 
 Mr. Froude's narrative of the proceedings in the case of 
 the Queen of Scots ; his account of the Northern 
 rebellion ; of the progi-ess of " religion ; " and of that 
 fearful anarchy which must euphemistically be called the 
 English government of Ireland. 
 
 We have surely now heard the last of defences of the 
 honour of Mary Stuart. Apart from the ridiculous 
 perverseness of Elizabeth, they would never have been 
 possible. The English Queen was, indeed, cruel, but 
 her reckless unMndness was to her friends, not to her 
 chief foe. Mary she spared ; it was men like the 
 Regent Murray — men of rare wisdom, splendid disin- 
 terestedness and unsullied honour — whom she left to the 
 chances of war or the dagger of the assassin. No proof 
 of guilt could possibly be clearer than the proof of 
 Mail's share in the murder of Darnley. Elizabeth saw 
 the proofs, and recognized their damning force. But 
 she was always occupied with foolish and dishonest " by 
 practices ; " and in spite of the advice of her ministers 
 and her own obligations to the Scottish lords, she would 
 not suffer the evidence to be published, nor a just sen- 
 tence to be passed. 
 
 Hence, and hence only, it became possible for such a 
 book as the Bishop of Boss's " Defence " to be written. 
 Plausible assumptions are of little value in the presence 
 of opposing facts ; though Mary's ambassador and faith- 
 ful friend might well argue that it was incredible so 
 noble and gracious a princess could have had even a 
 motive to commit the foul crimes with which she was 
 charged. But what are all hypotheses compared with 
 the Casket letters ? As soon as the Bishop of Boss's 
 " Defence " was published, Cecil protested against its 
 one abominable lie — the lie that the English nobility 
 
64 
 
 ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 
 
 had doubted the guilt of Mary. There was absolutely 
 no doubt on the matter, no hesitation anywhere, not 
 even in the mind of Norfolk, who shivered with horror 
 as he reflected on what pillow he was scheming to lay 
 his head — not a single misgiving except in the imbe- 
 cillity of Elizabeth's character. She could and she could 
 not, she would and she would not, she must and she 
 must not ; and the friends of Mary's memory have only 
 rewarded her self-willed folly with insult and infamy. 
 
 The Northern rebellion convinced her at last on what 
 hidden fires she was treading. In a large part of her . 
 dominions there was a universal discontent. Almost 
 the whole nobility were implicated in treasonable con- 
 spiracy. Even Leicester, the mean creature whom 
 alone of all mankind Elizabeth seems really to have 
 loved, was false — false to her, and to his country, and to 
 himself. The only faithful friends she had were those 
 who, for their vei"y faithfulness, had been in constant 
 danger of her displeasure. Tottering on the very edge 
 of the precipice, she would suffer them to draw her back 
 from ruin ; but the moment she was safe, or thought 
 herself safe, she would go on her old proud, reckless 
 way, even if she hurled them into the abyss. She had 
 to be forced, not gracefully, to permit the execution of 
 Norfolk ; she utterly refused to allow the attainder of 
 Mary. She had her ovm schemes and expectations. 
 France would help her, or Spain would help her — even 
 the very Pope_ might help her ; at any rate she would 
 not yield. Where was this Queen's grace ? She scolded . 
 her Parliaments, she insulted her Ministers, she cursed 
 her friends, she blessed only her enemies. 
 
 Her vreetched parsimony was often even more mis- 
 chievous than her paltry vanity. The "government" 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 65 
 
 of Ireland was one long shameful injustice. She would 
 
 neither pay for energetic work, nor submit to the only 
 
 conditions of genuine conciliation. Not even the 
 
 Spanish Papists were more fiendishly cruel than the 
 
 English colonists who were to have conquered Ireland 
 
 by exterminating the Irish. Their only hope, not 
 
 merely of reward but of bare subsistence, was not in 
 
 the liberality of their queen, but in their own cruelty 
 
 and craft. 
 
 Eeligion owed nothing to Elizabeth, everything to 
 
 her ministers — ^the ministers who were always true, and 
 
 never trusted. She would have yielded to the Catholics, 
 
 and did yield to them, till she was made to understand 
 
 that such a poHcy was nothing else than sharpening an 
 
 axe for her own neck. The Puritans were no doubt 
 
 premature and embarrassing; but they were the Ee- 
 
 formers, the very strongest supports of the Queen's 
 
 throne ; and yet she hated them and thwarted them at 
 
 every turning. She thought that men who had the 
 
 moral corn-age to defy the Pope and cast off the authority 
 
 of all Christian antiquity, would accept just as much and 
 
 be content with just as little as a mere girl thought fit 
 
 to give them. And yet she had enough of shrewdness 
 
 and knowledge of the world to despise those who were 
 
 satisfied with her own ecclesiastical system. Others 
 
 began the great work of Keformation that Elizabeth 
 
 hindered and which is not even yet complete. 
 
 " Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs 
 And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns . ' ' 
 
 No earthly power ean stay the progress of human 
 thought and freedom ; and under the rule of the eternal 
 God even death itself is but the entrance to a fuller and 
 diviner life. 
 
66 ELIZABETH AND HEE ENGLAND. 
 
 Mr. Froude's history is a new treasure in English 
 literature, pure and vigorous in style, honest and im- 
 partial, in sympathy with all that is good and true ; not 
 only a noble record of the beginnings and first fruits cf 
 the Eeformation, but itself the sure token that the 
 whole harvest is well-nigh ready for the reapers. 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT.* 
 
 The history of " public opinion" is scarcely more than 
 a history of extravagances. There are long intervals 
 during which even on the gravest subjects the " public " 
 have no opinion whatever : they leave everything to the 
 Government, or to those thoughtful and energetic few 
 who do the real work of society. But sometimes, and 
 more frequently of late, under the stimulus of the 
 
 * From the " British Quarterly Review." 
 
 (1.) Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords 
 appointed to Inquire into the Exeoution of the Criminal Law, 
 especially respecting Juvenile Offenders and Transportation ; 
 together with the Minutes of Evidence taken before the said 
 Committee; and an Appendix. Session 1847. Ordered, by 
 the House of Commons, to be printed. 31st May, 1847. 
 
 (2.) Beport from the Select Committee on Transportation ; together 
 with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, 
 Appendix and Index. Ordered, by the House of Commons, 
 to be printed. 28th May, 1861. 
 
 (3.) Fortieth Beport of the Inspectors General on the General 
 , State of the Prisons of Ireland, 1861 ; with Appendices. 
 Dublin, 1862. 
 
 (4.) Reports of the Directors of Convict Prisons on the Discipline 
 and Management of Pentonville, Millbank, and Parhhurst 
 Prisons, and of Portland, Portsmouth, Dartmoor, Chatham, 
 and Brixton Prisons ; with Fulham Befuge, and the Invalid 
 Prison at Woking. For the year 1861. London. 1862. 
 
 (5.) Beport of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on 
 the 16 and 17 Vic. cap. 99. 1856. 
 F 2 
 
68 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 British press, the "public " does form an opinion, and 
 does its best to embody that opinion in a permanent 
 institution. Social problems are the most complicated 
 of all problems. It would be veiy difficult to determine 
 •what would be the effect of a given set of circumstances 
 even upon a single individual : it is immeasurably more 
 difficult to determine what will come of the combination 
 of a great number of individuals, each of whom has had 
 a separate and peculiar training. What is best fitted to 
 secure the interests of twenty or thirty millions of 
 people, all of whom are to be allowed the utmost possible 
 liberty, can be decided only by those who have carefully 
 studied the nature of man and the lessons of histoiy. 
 The "public" has unquestionably studied neither the 
 nature of man nor history : it therefore views all social 
 questions from one side only, and mistaking one small 
 part of a problem for the whole of it, its legislation and 
 administration, though often most energetic, can scarcely 
 fail to be extravagant. Nations may be seen passing 
 with the utmost ease from despotism to anarchy ; from 
 
 (6.) Observations on the Treatment of Convicts in Ireland ; with 
 
 some Remarks on the Same in England. By Foue Visiting 
 
 Justices of the West Riding Pbison at Wakepibld. 
 
 London. 1862. 
 (7.) Female Life in Prison. By A Pbison Mateon. Second 
 
 Edition, Revised. Two Vols. London. 1863. 
 (8.) Irish Convict Reform. The Intermediate Prisons a Mistake. 
 
 By An Irish Pbison Chaplaitst in the Convict Seevioe, 
 
 Dublin. 1863. 
 (9.) Some Articles and Letters which appeared in the " Times " 
 
 and other Papers, on the Subject of the Treatment of Convicts, 
 
 Longman. 
 (10.) Rides for the Government of the House of Correction at 
 
 Preston, in the County Palatine of Lancaster. Preston. 
 
 1857. 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 69 
 
 the most offensive distinctions and divisions of the 
 different classes of society to liberty, equality and 
 fraternity. Despotism grinds down the faces of the 
 poor, crushes true merit, and lifts up the worthless into 
 the high places of honour : therefore let royalty and 
 nobility be at an end, and citizen embrace citizen in 
 holy brotherhood. Alas ! even equality and fraternity 
 have their darker side, and seem sometimes only to 
 mean the right of the cruel, and idle, and strong to 
 make a prey of their neighbours ; prompting some men 
 to ask, ' Were not even a strong despotism, with only 
 the chance of its being wise and good, immeasurably to 
 be preferred ? ' 
 
 Some considerable time ago, the British public was 
 waked out of its entire indifference to the treatment of 
 criminals, by those good men who had found out that 
 our prisons and prison system were possibly even more 
 wicked and mischievous than the crimes of which their 
 inmates had been guilty. They perceived that such 
 punishment as society was then inflicting on evildoers, 
 was making them far worse than they had ever been 
 before ; and they thought, with Socrates in " The 
 Republic," that to make men more unjust can never be 
 the work of justice. They found young and old — the 
 youth who had committed a first offence and the incor- 
 rigible ruffian to whom the jail had become a second 
 home, the penitent and the tempter^all crowded to- 
 gether in dens of infamy, where evei-y kind of abomina- 
 tion, physical and moral, attained its most diabolic 
 perfection. They laid the whole dark story before their 
 fellow-countrymen, and in the name of the just and 
 merciful God, who is kind to the unthankful and evil, 
 they bade them remember that even the worst of men 
 
70 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 did not cease to be men, and might not be punished by 
 being cast before their time into a hell of malignant 
 devils. They hoped it might be possible so to punish 
 wicked men that they might be made good men. They 
 were quite sure that it was possible to discover some 
 mode of punishment by which they should not be made 
 more wicked. 
 
 This was so small a piece of a social problem that the 
 British public could clearly see it, and moreover it was 
 quite necessary that they should see it. It had been 
 enough for them to know that a highwayman or house- 
 breaker was somehow sent out of the way of doing 
 further mischief : they now began to think it necessary 
 to ask what had become of him. Capable of seeing only 
 one thing at a time, they turned away from society, and 
 gave their whole attention to the criminal. Philanthropy 
 became everything, justice nothing. Philanthropy itself 
 also degenerated only too quickly into the sentimentalism 
 of philanthropy. The dens of filth, and fever, and vice, 
 were changed into Sir Joshua Jebb's " pen of pet lambs," 
 Prisons were made more comfortable than workhouses 
 and the homes of the labouring and honest poor. The 
 compulsory industry which, at the best, fell far short of 
 the most obvious duty of the workman, was rewarded by 
 gratuities ; and the sentences, already too short and too 
 easy, were yet further relaxed. But, at any rate, society 
 felt that the old method had been wrong, and that the 
 new one was its opposite. Moreover, the public became 
 rather tired of considering the subject ; and after having 
 been waked up by the philanthropists, questioned, re- 
 buked, teazed, puzzled by them, left the whole matter 
 in their hands, and went to sleep again. Unhappily, 
 the ladies and gentlemen who were accommodated with 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 71 
 
 private apartments at Millbank and Pentonville, were at 
 liberty to wake up and betake themselves to their old 
 friends and haunts almost exactly at the time when the 
 British public was comfortably settling itself for a fresh 
 period of repose, a repose to be too rudely disturbed. 
 Eaformed convicts let loose upon society found it ex- 
 tremely difficult, and not a little disagreeable, to earn 
 their living by hard work. To earn thirty shillings 
 would have required at least six days of persevering and 
 well-directed labour. To knock a man down and take 
 that sum out of his pocket required only five minutes 
 and a life-preserver. This new mode of " self-help " 
 became in consequence remarkably popular, and people 
 were knocked down and robbed in busy thoroughfares, 
 in broad daylight, and almost at their own doors. It 
 was found that the ruffians who perpetrated these out- 
 rages, were, in very many cases, convicts who had been 
 released from confinement with " tickets-of-leave." The 
 British public had suddenly to wake up again, all the 
 more irritable and angry because its sleep had been so 
 soon disturbed. People seemed not disinclined to return 
 to the barbarities of which the philanthropists had so 
 righteously made them ashamed; and, indeed, the re- 
 action from the sentimentalism of the last few years is 
 so strong and so general, that there is no small danger 
 of om* becoming for a little while merciless and unjust, 
 and after a little while longer more stupidly sentimental 
 than ever. Yet, perhaps, a careful consideration of the 
 folly of sacrificing society to the criminal on the one 
 hand, and the possibility of protecting society without 
 wholly sacrificing the criminals on the other, may assist 
 the formation of a wise and sober judgment equally 
 remote from both the extravagances into which public 
 
72 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 opinion is so prone to swing. It may, at any rate, 
 reclaim the question for the calm determination of the 
 thoughtful few, whose decision will not be the result of 
 the vexation of disappointment, or of that idleness which 
 is content to try any new experiment for the sake of rest, 
 but of careful inquiry into the actual working of the 
 system at present adopted, and a comparison of that 
 system and its effects with such methods as have been 
 adopted in time past or in other countries. 
 
 Though we may at present be treating our convicts 
 with too much leniency, it must not be supposed that 
 life at Millbank or Pentonville offers so many attractions 
 as to be a prsemium for crime. It is surely not desirable 
 that prisons should be dirty and ill-ventilated, or that 
 prisoners who have committed no capital offence should 
 be slowly put to death by prison treatment. The diet of 
 prisoners may require reconsideration, and it may be 
 thought wise to relieve the medical officers of the respon- 
 sibility of interfering with it except in extreme cases to 
 be accurately defined. But with all the good living, and 
 cleanliness, and light of the Government prisons, it is 
 scarcely possible to conceive of anything more utterly 
 dreai-y than a prisoner's life. As we rise from the 
 perusal of some of the articles which have lately appeared 
 in the daily papers, we are half inclined to suppose that 
 a convict would rush with eager joy to the happy abode 
 which for seven or eight of the best years of his life is to 
 be his home. Such a mistake would be in a moment 
 corrected by actually seeing the unhappy wretch who has 
 just been caged like a dangerous beast, and left to that 
 worst of all solitudes, the remembrance of evil deeds 
 and the knowledge that they have been all in vain. It is 
 impossible to mistake the misery and disgust with which 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 73 
 
 his whole soul is iilled, the bitter mortification and 
 baffled rage with which he restlessly paces his narrow 
 cell, and gazes upon the bars and doors which shut him 
 out from the wild and jovial liberty which he had been 
 so heartily enjoying. Nor is it easy to determine upon 
 which class of convicts the burden of imprisonment 
 presses most heavily. In these frightful abodes are to 
 be found, only too often, those who had been gentlemen 
 and scholars, accustomed to the refinements and luxuries 
 of good society, taught to hate with too vainglorious a 
 haughtiness everything low-bred and vulgar, except sin 
 and crime. When the door of their cell is locked upon 
 them, they know too well that for weary years they will 
 scarcely be permitted to see a single face that will look 
 kindly on them. They will have for companions the 
 vulgarest and most brutalized of mankind, nor even with 
 these will they be suffered for some iime to have any 
 intercourse. They must wear the prison dress and do 
 the prison work, weaving coarse cloth or mats, making 
 shoes or clothes, or work harder still and further 
 removed from all their former training and habits. They 
 wUl have to pace in silence every day the same dreary 
 exercise-ground, till they know almost eveiy brick in the 
 walls and every pebble under their feet. They will have 
 to sit in school with men who can neither read nor 
 write, and whose very faces are the registers of innume- 
 rable villainies and the deepest ignorance. This is not 
 the kind of Ufe, surely, that would attract the men who 
 commit forgeries and plan and execute gigantic frauds. 
 Yet possibly the prison life of the pickpocket or burglar, 
 the Charley Bates or Bill Sykes of real life, may be more 
 gloomy and miserable still. For such people have no 
 mental resources- Imprisonment cuts them off from the 
 
74 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 source of the only pleasures they ever knew, the 
 pleasures of a wild and jolly life with companions like 
 themselves ; pleasures that perhaps have been made all 
 the keener by the stimulus of danger. In truth, so 
 odious is convict life even in our model prisons, that as 
 the warders and of&cers testify, it is the one unceasing 
 study of a prisoner how by any chance he may effect his 
 escape. 
 
 Yet if prison life be odious, it is unquestionably meant 
 to be so, and ought to be made so. The cells should be 
 light, clean, well ventilated, and sufficiently warm ; and 
 they ought to be this, even though the cottages of the 
 honest poor are not. The State cannot condescend to 
 set an example of dirtiness even to criminals, or to 
 imitate the habits and copy the neglects which are among 
 the most fruitful sources of crime. But convicts should 
 be made to work hard, and they should by no means be 
 overfed. It is by no means easy to compel a convict to 
 work hard. It is impossible for the most careful officer 
 to determine how long a man takes to learn a trade, and 
 how many shoes and trousers he can make in a given 
 time. Where convicts are engaged, as at Portland, on 
 what to a fi-ee labourer would be hard work, it would be 
 extremely dangerous to insist on more than a moderate 
 amount of labour. For it would be not less easy, and to 
 many convicts more agreeable, to put a spade or pickaxe 
 into the head of a warder, than into rock or soil. If a 
 free bricklayer chooses to be idle, his master can dismiss 
 him, and the man may take holiday as long as he likes, 
 and if he thinks proper, starve himself to death. But if 
 a convict bricklayer chooses to be idle, he can neither be 
 dismissed nor killed ; and the longer he is refractory 
 and useless, so much the longer and more heavily does 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 75 
 
 he burden society. The amount of out-door work that 
 some of the correspondents of the daily press seem to 
 expect from convicts, could be secured at any rate in our 
 existing convict establishments, if at all, only by the 
 constant presence of a strong military guard ; and such 
 severe punishments as neither the sentimentalism nor 
 the civilization of this country would endure. Yet 
 it would not seem altogether impracticable to punish the 
 refractory as the idle outside a prison punish themselves. 
 When a free man refuses to work, he simply refuses to 
 earn wages ; and his wages are not the money he 
 receives, but those things the money represents, and for 
 which it will be exchanged. His real wages are bread 
 and meat, and potatoes and beer, the use of a house to 
 live in, clothes to wear, and the means of obtaining the 
 society of a wife and providing for his children. If 
 he refuses to earn wages he simply refuses to smoke his 
 pipe, to drink his pot of ale, t3 inhabit a decent house, 
 to have warm clothes, and in a while to have any food at 
 all. Long before he arrives at that last stage, even the 
 idle man has generally changed his mi'ad about earning 
 wages, and has discovered that though he extremely dis- 
 likes work, he dislikes cold and hunger very much more. 
 Cold and hunger are the punishments that idle and 
 dissolute people inflict upon themselves ; and there 
 seems no very obvious reason why it should not be 
 the punishment that society might inflict upon idle 
 prisoners. 
 
 Of course prisoners whose diet had been reduced 
 would become thin, and suifer as much physical incon- 
 venience as might require in time the interference of a 
 medical officer. But everybody out of work for three or 
 four weeks becomes thin ; and the medicine which any 
 
76 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 physician would prescribe for such a patient would 
 unquestionably be more nourishing food and plenty of it. 
 The difference between a convict and an honest labourer 
 ought not to be, as unfortunately it is, whoUy in favour 
 of the convict. The honest labourer out of work cannot 
 afford a doctor, and knows quite well that even if he 
 could, it would be useless to ask advice which it would 
 be impossible to follow. The average diet of well- 
 conducted convicts can be wisely determined only by 
 medical men after a sufficient number of careful experi- 
 ments ; and the object of these experiments should be to 
 discover the minivium of food, both in quantity and 
 quality, which will sufEioe to keep a convict in ordinary 
 health. When a prisoner is idle and disorderly, there 
 is no obvious reason why that minimum should not be 
 reduced. Of course the man would become ill, but the 
 cure for his illness would be the easiest and cheapest 
 that could be devised, namely, work. Within the walls 
 of a prison there is always work to be had, and the man 
 who will not do it might safely be allowed to punish 
 himself by those very distresses which all other idle 
 vagabonds are compelled to suffer. The actual minimum 
 at Portland (though not a tenth part of the convicts 
 there are kept so low) consists — 
 
 " For fom- days of the week of 12 oz. of bread for breakfast, with 
 a pint of tea ; ditmer, 6 oz. of cooked meat free from bone, 1 lb. 
 of cooked potatoes, and 6 oz. of bread ; supper, one pint of gruel, 
 16 oz. of bread. On the three remaining days of the week the 
 rations are better stUl, the breakfast being a pint of cocoa, witli 
 tnilk and sugar, and 12 oz. of bread ; dinner, one pint of soup, 
 5 oz. of cooked meat free from bone, 1 lb. of cooked potatoes, 
 and 10 oz. of suet pudding. On this ' ordinary diet ' — ^which as 
 daily food would be a very extraordinary one to most of our hard- 
 working labourers tliroughout the kingdom — aU the conyicts used 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 77 
 
 formerly to live, till a few years ago, when one of the ' dilettante ' 
 prison philanthropists, of whom there are now so many, discovered 
 that convicts, if worked hard on such diet, might lose muscle, and 
 it was accordingly raised to the ' increased scale.' .... In 
 addition to tliis, aU the prisoners of every grade or scale of diet 
 have each 3 oz. of treacle to eat with their bread, served to them 
 every week, viz., 1^ oz. on Sunday, and 1^ oz. on Wednesday. 
 For such as are employed out of doors, but who are not at hard 
 labour — who have, in fact, only their appetites sharpened by the 
 fresh sea-breeze — there is what is called a ' light labour diet for 
 the public works.' This consists of a pint of tea or cocoa, with 
 6 oz. of bread, for breakfast; 6 oz. of bread, 6 oz. of cooked 
 meat free from bone, half a pint of soup, and half a pound of 
 potatoes, for dinner; and oz. of bread, with a pint of gruel, or 
 tea, ' if preferred,' for supper. What the light labour is it is hard 
 to discover, especially as the ' hard ' seems to be about the mini- 
 mum of what will keep the men's hands going at aU. Stone- 
 breaking, close under the prison walls, is one of the works that 
 come under this category ; and though this work, as we generally 
 see it done, is certainly not light labour, yet the way in which it 
 is performed at Portland amply justifies the prison authorities in 
 classing it under this head. Those who have ever seen the pile 
 of stones which the wretched starving tramp has to break ia the 
 stoneyard of a workhouse, in payment for his night's shelter in 
 the casual ward, should come to Portland to see what the convict 
 does for his day's work. The work in the quarries is a mockery 
 of ' hard labour,' and the ' light labour,' as the convicts do it, is 
 positively not labour at all. Even taking the light-labour diet as 
 the standard, no mere hard-working daily labourer in this part of 
 England can command it. None certainly are so well and 
 warmly lodged, or as carefully looked after in health or sickness. 
 Perhaps, however, it is worth while adding that even those 
 prisoners on the ordinary diet, when in their third stage, receive 
 their extra allowance of bread and cheese and beer after dinner 
 on Sundays, and that those in the fourth stage have not only the 
 bread and cheese and beer, but the usual treacle pudding on 
 Thursdays, baked mutton in lieu of beef on Thursdays and 
 Fridays, and baked beef instead of boiled on Sundays and 
 Mondays. But in order to give all diets, we must give one which 
 does not appear in the prison books, which is infirmary diet. 
 When a convict is placed on this by the doctor, he has, of course, 
 
78 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 whatever the doctor orders him. When he is placed on infirmary 
 diet, through the exertions or intercessions of powerful friends, he 
 can have almost what he pleases. Sir John Dean Paul and 
 others were placed on this infirmary list through the exertions of 
 their friends, and an exemption was also made in Sir John's case 
 from working at the quarries."* 
 
 This account does not diiFer materially from that 
 given by Sir Joshua Jebh to the Select Committee on 
 Transportation in 1861 (Repoi-t, pp. 2, 3), and it may 
 be compared with the dietary tables of other institutions, 
 in which it is equally necessary that human beings 
 should be kept in health, and in some of which their 
 treatment is not intended to be penal. The treat- 
 ment of paupers, indeed, is so utterly barbarous and 
 disgraceful that no convicts would submit to it ; and 
 with them no Government dare venture upon it. In the 
 House of Correction, however, at Preston, the prisoners are 
 extremely well cared for. The new portion of the prison 
 . is light, warm, and well ventilated, though the cells are 
 more prison-like than those at Millbank. The prisoners, 
 moreover, are treated with great consideration and real 
 kindness by the governor; who seems to know something 
 of every individual under his charge, and is manifestly 
 anxious that imprisonment should be as far as possible 
 reformatory. The prisoners also are by no means 
 emaciated or sickly, and in fact seem much benefited by 
 their prison fare, beyond what might have been expected 
 from the comparatively short term of their confinement. 
 But they have no treacle, or suet dumplings, no cocoa, 
 or tea, or beer, in fact none of those preposterous 
 indulgences by which criminals who have been guilty of 
 
 * Times, Dec. 26, 1802. 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 79 
 
 graver offences are coaxed into something approaching to 
 decent behaviour. The dietary for adults above seven- 
 teen years of age is as follows : — 
 
 SUNDAY AND WEDNESDAY. 
 
 MALES. 
 
 Breakfast and Supper. 
 Dinner 
 
 5!| 
 
 FEMALES, 
 
 2 . . . Breakfast and Supper. 
 16,, Dinner 
 
 2 Pi 
 
 I § 
 
 MONDAY AND THUHSDAY. 
 
 Breakfast and Supper. 
 Dinner 
 
 65 
 61 
 
 
 2|...|Breakfast andSupper.l 6J |...|...|...| 11... 
 ...1 alDiuner | 6| I...I... ...1... 1 
 
 
 TUESDAY AND FRIDAY. 
 
 Breakfast and Supper. 1 6f . . . 1 . . . 1 . . . 1 2i . . . [Breakfast and Supper . | 6| 
 Dinner 1 6| ...|l6l 2|...|..jDinuer 1 6| 
 
 1 
 
 
 11... 
 
 . . 8 
 
 2 
 
 ...1 
 
 SATUBDAY. 
 
 Breakfast and Supper. 
 
 6| 
 6| 
 
 "i 
 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 ..iBreakfast and Supper. 
 
 6| 
 6J 
 
 "4 
 
 
 
 ll... 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Per Week 
 
 140 
 
 12 
 
 64 
 
 28 
 
 6 PerWeek , 
 
 140 
 
 12^32 
 
 4 
 
 14' 3 
 
 It may well be doubted whether high feeding does not 
 tend directly to produce some of those vices which have 
 so often been proved to abound among convicts, and 
 much of that insubordination which has frequently led 
 to most fatal consequences. At any rate "the line 
 must be drawn " somewhere ; and it should be drawn 
 not by the prisoner, nor even by the prison officials, but 
 by society, by those who are every way interested in 
 making punishment a grim reality. The convicts 
 employed in the public works earn, it would seem, 
 about one penny a day more than the cost of their 
 maintenance. 
 
80 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 " What portion of those convicts are really earning money for 
 the Government ? Some must he invalids, and some must he 
 cooks, and so on.— The 3,722 at Portland, Portsmouth, and 
 Chatham are all earning money. Ahout one-fifth or one-sixth 
 would have to be deducted from that number for those at school, 
 invalids, cooks, &c. The maintenance of each prisoner is about 
 Is. 9d. a day ; and most of those at work earn Is. lOd. or 2s. a 
 day, or more. AH are industrious, and many more highly 
 skilled. 
 
 " A man who is really working earns more than the cost of his 
 maintenance ? — Generally they do, everything except the build- 
 ing."* 
 
 From a penny to twopence a day, then, is what each 
 of these convicts actually employed on hard labom- would, 
 if he were free and working at the same rate, have to 
 spend upon rent and the maintenance of his wife and 
 family. What the work these convicts really do is now 
 pretty well known, and has excited very much indigna- 
 tion. It is plain, that so far from deserving gratuities, 
 their very work itself is so had and unremunerative that 
 the best of it scarcely rises above the desert of punish- 
 ment. The gi'atuities themselves are so judiciously 
 distributed, that there was actually due to one of the 
 prisoners who mutinied at Portland and who afterwards 
 mutinied at Chatham, who had been only three years 
 and ten months in prison, and who was returned by the 
 prison authorities themselves as a bad character — to this 
 worthy there was actually due a gratuity of £,1 9s. 3d. 
 It is quite impossible to understand upon what principle 
 (if any) these gratuities are given; for out of 850 
 convicts who were implicated in the mutiny at Chatham, 
 seventy-three are returned as of exemplary conduct, and 
 640 as of " very good " and " good " conduct. Indeed, if 
 
 * Sir Joshua Jebb, Evidence, Transportation Report, 1861, p. 14. 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 81 
 
 we would get the faintest notion of what these testi- 
 monials are worth, we must remember that prison life is 
 altogether artificial ; determined by laws and motives that 
 either do not exist at all outside the prison, or are 
 modified in ordinary life by so many important considera- 
 tions that they scarcely deseiTe to be taken separately 
 into account. A great number of crimes are never 
 committed because the vigilance of prison discipline 
 ■renders it impossible to commit them. The standard 
 of good conduct is necessarily exceedingly low ; virtue, 
 in fact, consisting in freedom from impossible vices. 
 Moreover, there is scarcely a single official ■ connected 
 with any of the Government prisons who is not urged by 
 the strongest motives to make the very best of the system 
 which he has to take part in administering. 
 
 In the case of warders, this is plain from the evidence 
 given by Sir J. Jebb himself to the Select Committee 
 on Transportation : — 
 
 " Quest. 62. Mr. Roebuck. — I should like to understand what 
 is the course of proceeding. You say that you commonly judge 
 of a convict's character from the books which are kept ; 
 but who keeps the books ? — Some of the books are kept by the 
 governor, but every officer in charge of prisoners has his book, 
 and notes down daily the industry and the conduct of the men. 
 That is summed up weekly, monthly, and quarterly, and intro- 
 duced into the proper books. 
 
 " 63. — So that the judge in the last resort of a prisoner's con- 
 duct, may be the lowest turnkey ? — No ; the lowest warder has, 
 say twenty men under him. He has a book, which is ruled in a 
 certain form, and he makes his note every day of a man's 
 industry; because the gratuities to be awarded to him daily 
 depend on his report of the man's industry and conduct. That is 
 examined by the principal warder, again by the chief warder and 
 deputy governor, and it then comes to the governor. 
 
 " 64. — But does that not amount to what I- say — that the 
 
 a 
 
82 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 person who really deeides upon the conduct of the prisoner is the 
 warder who sets all that down ? — No ; he does not decide upon 
 tlae case, he brings it forward. 
 
 " 65. — But the decision depends on what he has set down ? — In 
 a great measure it may do so. 
 
 " 66. — Then I want to know what precautions are taken with 
 regard to these warders. Their character is of course a matter of 
 Yery great importance : do you inquire into that ? — We always 
 inquire into their characters. Most of them have been sergeants 
 in the Guards or the Line, the Engineers or Marines. They 
 come before me with their testimonials, which enables me in a 
 measm'e to judge of their character and general quahfications. 
 They are then put upon the list of candidates, and recommended 
 to the Secretary of State by me as vacancies occur. They are, 
 however, only appointed on probation. The governor is fully 
 authorized to report, that the appointment should not be 
 confirmed. 
 
 " 67. — Mr. Bright. — The warder having the superintendence 
 of the convicts has gratuities, has he not, which are regulated 
 according to the good behaviour of those who are placed under 
 him? — Yes; gratuities of 2s. 6d. to 4s., and the principal 
 warder 5s. a week. These gratuities are to compensate them 
 for their exposure in the open air, the vigilance which they are 
 obliged to exercise in preventing escapes, having men working at 
 a distance from the prison, to stimulate them to exertion, and to 
 give them generally an interest in the work of the men. 
 
 "68. — Is not the warder's receipt of that gratuity dependent 
 upon his giving a favourable turn to his report of the conduct of 
 the men under him? — Not altogether; it depends a good deal 
 upon the observation of those who are over him. If he sends in 
 a report that his men have been all industrious, and the principal 
 warder, or chief warder, sees that they have not been so, the 
 warder would be reported, and his gratuities forfeited." 
 
 More powerful motives even than the hope of gratui- 
 ties must be ever inclining the warders to return the 
 most favourable possible reports of their prisoners. 
 The " lambs " that these shepherds have to watch are, 
 after all, only "wolves in sheep's clothing." Their 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 83 
 
 passions are very violent; and if they are at all 
 frequently reported as guilty of misconduct, they begin 
 to feel that they have nothing to lose. They not seldom 
 rid themselves of the man whom they regard as their 
 enemy, by a ferocious attack upon him ; and an over- 
 scrupulous warder would walk about among his prisoners 
 in constant peril of his life. Of course such insubor- 
 dination would be punished; but the Parliamentary 
 return, which cast so much light on the character of the 
 Chatham mutineers, warns us not to expect too much 
 from that mild chastisement. 
 
 The superior prison officials are naturally interested 
 in " the system " they administer; they are conscious of 
 their own honest and persevering efforts to make it 
 "work" satisfactorily; they actually do secure a good 
 amount of order ; and at any cost of gratuities, coaxing, 
 high feeding, and the like, it seems to them the one 
 thing needful to keep their charge quiet and good 
 tempered. Order in the prison is what they have to- 
 secure; and if that were all that society requires, it 
 might with very slight difficulty be obtained. It would 
 be obtained, however, most quickly and most surely by 
 changing punishment into indulgence, by defeating the 
 very purpose for which punishment and prisons exist. 
 We should never forget that the prison treatment which 
 is most beneficial to society is precisely that which gives 
 most trouble to prison officials. 
 
 The testimony, however, as to the efficiency of our 
 present method of dealing with convicts, which is at 
 once best and worst, truest and falsest, safest and most 
 dangerous, is the testimony of prison chaplains. They 
 are among the most honourable and self-denying men 
 in the country. They have to deal with a class of society 
 
 G.2 
 
84 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 which is the most hopeless of all classes. They have, 
 very properly, the utmost confidence in the power of the 
 Gospel to restore even the worst of men, and make them 
 fit and willing to discharge all the duties of life. But 
 they seem continually to forget that in a prison the 
 temptations to hypocrisy are increased, and the oppor- 
 tunities of detecting it are diminished, to the utmost 
 possible extent. Any one who is at all in the habit of 
 studying the faces of human beings, may quite easily 
 perceive, on visiting any jail — the Preston House of 
 Correction, for instance, of which the late Mr. Clay was 
 chaplain — that the men who have a little Bible lying open 
 on their table are unquestionably the greatest scoundi'els 
 in the prison. They have that unmistakeably sneaking 
 appearance which every chaplain should learn to re- 
 cognize as the physical sign of demoniacal possession. 
 But the plain fact is, that even if it were not easy to 
 snivel and read the Bible, and if the temptations of life, 
 which discover the real character of men, abounded in 
 jail (which they do not), the chaplain's reports ought to 
 have no effect whatever upon the sentences and treat- 
 ment of prisoners. This is necessary even for the real 
 benefit of the prisoners : it is much more necessary for 
 the sake of society. What lies beyond the prison in 
 this world or in the next world, is the region over 
 which the hopes of good men may wander in peace and 
 faith. But within the limits of the jail, and during the 
 term of imprisonment, the goodness which the chaplains 
 should offer for the acceptance of prisoners must be 
 sought for its own sake, stripped absolutely bare of those 
 temporal advantages with which in ordinary cases it is 
 associated. The thief, the forger, the murderer, the 
 man who has shrunk from no depths of falsehood or 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 85 
 
 / 
 
 excesses of cruelty, that he might get money or gratify 
 some ungoverned passion, would scarcely hesitate to 
 affect repentance for the sake of an earlier liberty and a 
 quicker return to all his old courses. In fact, those who 
 have been guilty of the worst crimes are often in prison 
 extremely quiet and orderly, though very often far 
 indeed from being penitent. In the case of women, at 
 any rate, the testimony of a " Prison Matron " on this 
 point is decisive. One of the most orderly and ' ' hopeful " 
 of convicts was a woman who had murdered her child 
 because it " made such a row " in screaming. Murder 
 is not, indeed, regarded as one of the fine arts by these 
 amiable culprits ; but it is by no means regarded with 
 horror, as one of the worst crimes that a human being 
 can commit. And, at any rate, society has said that for 
 its own sake, during a certain period, the evil-doer shall 
 suffer ; if for his own good as well as for that of society, 
 so much the better, but anyhow for the good of society. 
 Repentance does not undo the effects of crime, and it 
 does scarcely anything towards preventing the recurrence 
 of it. Society, therefore, cannot accept repentance as 
 an expiation, nor trust in it as a method of self-defence. 
 The work of punishment is primarily for the benefit of 
 society, secondarily for the benefit of the prisoner : the 
 work of the chaplain is primarily for the benefit of the 
 prisoner, secondarily for the benefit of society. These 
 two works, therefore, not only differ, but vnthout the 
 utmost care might come to be opposed ; and it should 
 be remembered that prisons exist for the sake of society, 
 and not for the sake of the prisoners ; that the work of 
 the chaplain is altogether subordinate, and would have 
 to be dispensed with altogether if it interfered with the 
 sterner work of the prison. It is, indeed, a terrible 
 
86 
 
 ON CONYICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 necessity when it arises; but for the body politic, as for the 
 natural body, " it is better that one of the members should 
 perish than th'at the whole body should be cast into hell." 
 
 It is, however, on the reports of those who can 
 scarcely help taking that view of a prisoner's conduct 
 which society, in self-defence, has sternly refused to take, 
 that gratuities are awarded and sentences commuted. 
 A criminal is turned loose upon society before his time 
 simply because he has conformed, while in prison, to a 
 set of rules which in real life outside have no existence 
 and would serve no purpose. When he is released he 
 finds himself necessarily regarded with the utmost 
 suspicion. His temptations are very numerous and very 
 strong. He is very insufficiently watched, It is his 
 easiest, and, perhaps, may seem to himself his only 
 course, to seek out his old companions and haunts ; and 
 the next time society hears of him he is charged with 
 some new offence, and sent back again to be once more 
 a quiet, orderly prisoner, earning gratuities', as of old, 
 " of exemplary conduct " in every respect. 
 
 It is now pretty generally admitted, that our English 
 system of dealing with convicts is a failure : it does not 
 protect society, and it does not reform the criminals. 
 And if we would knbw both why that system has failed, 
 and upon what conditions alone any system can succeed, 
 we must carefully consider the very nature of punish- 
 ment itself, and what good it is intended to effect. We 
 may, indeed, be surprised, not at the number of criminals 
 and the greatness of their crimes, but at the fewness of 
 criminals, and the reluctance which even the most cruel 
 and profligate men manifest to commit those crimes 
 which are justly considered the most serious. The re- 
 straints to which any human being is subject in any 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 87 
 
 civilized country, and especially in our own, begin with 
 Hs very earliest days, and never for a single moment 
 cease. At home he is taught from the very first, and in 
 all manner of ways, that he cannot and shall not do 
 what he likes. At every turning he .finds that some- 
 body else's interests are as real and as much to be 
 regarded as his own. He has to submit to the authority 
 of his parents, and to deal fairly with his brothers and 
 sisters : at school, or during the term of his apprentice- 
 ship, he finds himself placed under a discipline more 
 rigorous still ; and with every new relationship, every 
 fresh desire, every development of character and capacity, 
 he finds his restraints multiplied. He can, in fact, by 
 no means whatever overtake them, or pass into any 
 region of life in which he shall be able to escape their 
 presence and power. He begins by degrees to perceive 
 that he is a member of a body ; that the restraints to 
 which he is subjected are highly beneficial ; that to be 
 released from them would be the form only, and not the 
 reality of freedom. He comes to perceive that they who 
 are most truly free, are sure to be the most orderly ; and 
 he learns to seek for that liberty which is the only real 
 liberty which any human, being can enjoy, the liberty of 
 being in harmony with the spirit of law. To desire and 
 to obtain that liberty is the result of a very complicated 
 and long continued education, a result, moreover, which 
 in many cases is never obtained at all. There are many 
 people who, all their lives long, fret against the restraints 
 of life, and are held back from crime not by the love of 
 goodness, but by the fear of pain. But inasmuch as 
 there is in every human being a brute nature, in respect 
 of which he is on the level only of the beasts which 
 perish ; inasmuch as there are in men the wants and 
 
88 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 desires, the passions, the rage, the ferocity, the cunning, 
 which are to be found also in tigers and foxes, and all 
 manner of carnivorous animals, so it is of the utmost 
 importance that this brute part of a man should be 
 thoroughly and for ever tamed, that lordship should be 
 given to the human and the spiritual, and not the 
 animal. How to do this, and especially how to do it for 
 those who seem equally unable and unwilling to do it 
 for themselves, is the most difficult of all the problems 
 which philanthropy has to solve. To tame the beast 
 and to ennoble the man in every human being, is the end 
 for which so many schools have been called into existence, 
 for which so many improvements have been made in the 
 dwellings of the poor and their sanitary condition, for 
 which also the law of God, and the Gospel of His grace, 
 have been given to men, and are continually being de- 
 clared to them by the ministers of religion. There is 
 no living man in whom the human has been entii'ely 
 destroyed ; nor is there any living man in wljom the 
 animal ought to be destroyed, for that is needed to do 
 the work of the spirit. 
 
 But, unfortunately, there are very many human beings 
 who are by, no means tamed, and these constitute the 
 criminal class. In so far as they are criminals, they are 
 allowing the brute that is in them to conquer the man, 
 and they must be treated accordingly. If a criminal 
 were a m0'e brute, he would, of course, be treated like 
 any other savage animal; he would be starved, whipped, 
 tethered, muzzled, or even killed, if he coald not be 
 cured of biting ; and after all, a treatment by no means 
 very dissimilar must be adopted for the breaking in of 
 wild and dangerous men, who set society at defiance, 
 and never scruple to indulge their own vicious pro- 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 89 
 
 pensities, however much harm they may do to their 
 neighbours. The fact which it is especially necessary to 
 remember is, that society really cannot wait to reform its 
 criminal classes : it must make them as speedily as 
 possible unable to do mischief, whether it can make them 
 unwilling or not. The man whose house has been 
 robbed, or who has been garotted and left senseless in 
 front of his own door by some lawless ruffian, has surely 
 a very ready and complete answer to any sentimental 
 philanthropist who would persuade him that his first 
 duty is not to punish the criminal but to reform him, 
 " And this place," says the imprisoned Alvar, in Cole- 
 ridge's " Kemorse," — 
 
 " my forefathers made for man ! 
 This is the process of our love and wisdom 
 To each poor brother who offends against us — 
 Most innocent, perhaps — and what if guilty ? 
 . Is this the only cure ? Merciful God ! 
 Ea.ch pore and natural outlet shriveled up 
 By ignorance and parching, poverty, 
 His energies roll back upon his heart 
 And stagnate and corrupt, till, changed to poison, 
 They break out on him, Uke a loathsome plague-spot I 
 Then we caU in our pampered mountebanks ; — 
 And this is their best cure ! uncomforted 
 And friendless soUtude, groaning and tears. 
 And savage faces at the clanking hour 
 Seen through the steam and vapours of his dungeon 
 By the lamp's dismal twilight ! So he lies 
 Circled with evil, tiU his very soul 
 Unmonlds its essence, hopelessly deformed 
 By sights of evermore deformity ! 
 With-other ministrations thou, O Nature, 
 Healest thy wandering and distempered cluld : 
 Thou pourest on him thy soft influences. 
 Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets. 
 Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters ! 
 TiU he relent, and can no more endure 
 
90 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 To be a jarring and a dissonant thing 
 Amid this general dance and minstrelsy ; 
 But bursting into tears, wins back his way, 
 His angry spirit healed and harmonized 
 By the benignant touch of love and beauty." 
 
 No one will deny that this is very charming poetry. If 
 we were to regard it as a part of the philosophy of edu- 
 cation, we might admit that it is both beautiful and 
 true. But if we regard it as the philosophy of criminal 
 law, it is so extremely imperfect and one-sided as to be 
 all but ridiculous ; while, unhappily, it is precisely the 
 philosophy on which sentimental philanthropists build 
 their practice. A respectable shopkeeper in Sloane 
 Street has been garotted in front of his own door, and a 
 hideous-looking ruf&an, aged forty, is brought to him, 
 and immediately identified as the culprit. The Sloane 
 Street shopkeeper is mildly requested to submit this 
 wayward and distempered child of nature to the soothing 
 ministrations of his mother, to the melodies of woods, 
 and winds, and waters. Ih plain English, we may say, 
 he is requested to send him for a few weeks to Brighton, 
 or Tunbridge Wells, to buy a season ticket for the 
 Crystal Palace, to take a box for him at the opera, or 
 anything else of the kind, by which "the benignant 
 touch of love and beauty" may fall upon him. The 
 Sloane Street shopkeeper knows a great deal better. He 
 replies, " This ruffian who sprang upon my throat last 
 night, has enjoyed forty years of tender ministrations. 
 Thousands of times the sun has risen upon him, calling 
 him to honest labour and innocent enjoyments. As 
 often the quiet night has wooed him to repose, and 
 renewed his powers for fresh toil, and his capacity for 
 new gladness. Through all those days he has been 
 surrounded by living examples of virtue and self- 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 91 
 
 reBtraint ; and when these have been absent he has been 
 startled by the terrible sufferings by which evil-doers are 
 tormented. Through all those years his weakest mo- 
 ments have been strengthened by the supports of law, 
 and the dread of punishment, and the common morality 
 of mankind. Through all those years religion has been 
 uttering to him more or less of her sublime promises 
 and encouragements. His first misdeeds have been for- 
 given and forgotten. And out of all these ministrations 
 he has come a hardened reprobate ; and there is not the 
 smallest reason to suppose that what could not keep him 
 good will make him better when he has become bad. 
 Meanwhile, I, unsentimental shopkeeper that I am, have 
 an incurable aversion to being suffocated ; and I must 
 insist that this wayward and distempered child of nature 
 shall be somewhere safely shut up, and receive the 
 benefit of other ministrations than those which have 
 hitherto proved so unsuccessful." 
 
 If this man be shut up, it is plain that his confine- 
 ment in a prison should be made extremely unpleasant 
 to him. His imprisonment will at the longest be far 
 too short to give any reasonable hopes of a radical 
 reformation. The humanity of those whom he has 
 defied and injured will do what may still seem possible 
 for the criminal himself; but the chief work of society 
 uponhim will be to tame the brute part of him. He 
 must be taught that by lawless violence he will lose in- 
 comparably more than he can hope to gain. He must 
 be made to understand that assault and robbery are 
 quite as painful and quite as dangerous as it would be 
 to thrust his hands into a hot fire. He must be made to 
 suffer so keenly that no temptation will ever again be able 
 to overcome his horror of punishment. If this be accom- 
 
92 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 plished, the man himself will be in some slight degree 
 benefited; for it is better to abstain from crime from the fear 
 of punishment, than not to abstain at all. But at any rate 
 the benefit to society will be very considerable, even though 
 the criminal be very imperfectly reformed. During the 
 whole term of his imprisonment it will be safe from his 
 violence, and for some considerable time afterwards he 
 will hesitate to commit offences that bring after them so 
 heavy a penalty. Moreover, those who were very dull 
 scholars in the school of nature may learn their lessons 
 much more rapidly in the school of criminal law. The 
 man who has been really and severely punished will not 
 fail to let his comrades know what is in store for them if 
 they should be so unfortunate as to be arrested. He 
 will make them clearly understand, that every one of 
 their privations and miseries will be increased when once 
 they are safely locked up within the walls of a prison. 
 
 Let it be clearly understood that the primary end of 
 punishment — imprisonment, transportation, and the 
 like — is the good of society, and not the good of the 
 criminal. Society, in fact, has no right to promote the 
 good of individuals by any such rough means. Very 
 many people who have committed no offence against the 
 laws of their country would nevertheless be greatly the 
 better for a few months' solitary confinement ; but no 
 Government dare do them that service against their will. 
 So, on the other hand, there are very many who dislike 
 regular instruction more than thieves dislike a treadmill; 
 but for all that, they are compelled to submit to it, and 
 they do not consider themselves punished or disgraced. 
 But though a school is often as disagreeable as a prison, 
 and a prison would be to many as useful as a school, the 
 two are never confounded excepting in the theories and 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 93 
 
 liobbies of sentimental philanthropists. The distinction 
 between them is this : the prison is for the good of 
 society, the school is for the good of the individual : the 
 prison is a punishment, however comfortable or useful : 
 the school is a privilege, however disagreeable or 
 neglected : that which is primary in the one is secondaiy 
 in the other, that which is secondary in the one is 
 primary in the other. 
 
 What, then, are we to do with our criminals when 
 they have been detected, tried, convicted ? There is one 
 class of evil-doers whose punishment indicates in the 
 clearest possible way what is the real end of all the 
 punishment which the State has the right to 'inflict. 
 Those who have committed murder, or been guilty of 
 one or two other crimes which are considered in an 
 especial degi-ee subversive of society, are put to death. 
 This is unquestionably the most effective of all punish- 
 ments : it renders impossible any repetition of crime by 
 the particular criminal so punished, and it produces a 
 terror of imitating his crime, which is in the highest 
 degree wholesome. Of course when a murderer is 
 hanged nobody pretends that the punishment is reforma- 
 tory ; and it is exactly that fact, the fact that the good 
 of the criminal himself is wholly disregarded, that makes 
 this mode of punishment, especially among sentimental 
 philanthropists, extremely unpopular. Our forefathers, 
 with their rough and ready justice, were content to 
 protect society and leave the criminal to God ; and even 
 prison chaplains, of a race happily extinct, could look 
 with marvellous unconcern upon what might come after- 
 wards, when a man was hanged up by his neck till he 
 was dead. " Within what time," asked a judge of a 
 chaplain, " may we reasonably hope for contrition in a 
 
94 
 
 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 condemned criminal?" "You mean," said the chap- 
 lain, with a cheerful confidence in his own powers of 
 persuasion, " what time is sufficient to prepare him to 
 die ? I would undertake, my lord, to prepare any man 
 for death in three weeks." * The British public echoes 
 with a yery marked emphasis the " Indeed " with which 
 the judge replied : but at any rate, prepared or unpre- 
 pared, there are many criminals who must die and take 
 their chance ; and if murderers ought not to be hanged, 
 a fortiori quiet citizens ought not to be murdered. Still, 
 there are many crimes for which the punishment of 
 death would be altogether and monstrously inappropriate. 
 It is hot impossible that capital punishment may be 
 abolished altogether, and we shall be constrained to 
 look to some other mode of dealing with those who have 
 declared by their own deeds that their liberty is incom- 
 patible with the safety of society. 
 
 Next to death, transportation would seem at first 
 sight to be the most effective mode of dealing with 
 criminals ; and at the present crisis it has again and 
 again been recommended, in spite of very numerous 
 failures in times past, and the utmost difficulty even 
 now of availing ourselves of this mode of relief. The 
 advantages of transportation, supposing it to be complete 
 and permanent, supposing that the convicts never 
 return from the countries to which they have been 
 banished, and supposing, moreover, that they are quite 
 unwilling to go, and supposing, moreover, that the 
 people to whom they are sent are very anxious to receive 
 them — the advantages are great and obvious. It would 
 be to the convict a punishment, and to society a com- 
 
 * " Chaptera on Prisons and Prisoners." Kingsmili, third 
 edition, p. 333. 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 95 
 
 plete protection. It is surely, however, very plain that 
 these conditions of the advantage of that mode of 
 punishment are now scarcely ever to be found. Trans- 
 portation is not a punishment. We cannot very easily 
 prevent the return of transported convicts, and there is 
 scarcely one of our colonies that would be willing to 
 receive them. A voyage to the antipodes is not now 
 that terror and mystery that it used to be. To be taken 
 over to Australia, for instance, is what thousands of 
 honest labourers desire. Cheap land, abundance of 
 work, and especially the gold-fields, have made emigra- 
 tion exceedingly attractive. Moreover, there is scarcely 
 a single colony which would now be willing to receive 
 our dangerous classes. We could make use of trans- 
 portation now to relieve ourselves only of the best, and 
 not of the worst of our criminals ; the penitents who 
 might well be recommended to mercy, and not the 
 incurable reprobates who richly deserve to be hanged. 
 Transportation, which is not punishment, has no power 
 whatever to deter men from crime ; while even to our 
 own country the opportunity of hiding our criminals out 
 of sight may as often be a mischief as an advantage. 
 Moreover, whether it is so now or not, it very soon will 
 be impossible to find any place whatever to which we can 
 transport our convicts ; and the difficulty which will 
 then arise may as well be met and overcome at once. 
 There are considerations, however, more important than 
 any of mere expediency, which should not be forgotten 
 in any return to our old system of transportation. We 
 send our criminals away exactly because we do not know 
 what to do with them, because they are dangerous both 
 to our security and morality. They are idle and will 
 not work ; they are dishonest and cannot be trusted. 
 
96 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 By what right, then, do we pour out upon any one of 
 our colonies this flood of vice and crime ? The relation 
 of a colony to the mother-country is by no means 
 regarded now as it was in the time of the American war 
 of independence. The obedience of Australia or Canada 
 to the imperial Government is rapidly tending towards, 
 though it has not yet reached, that amount of unreality 
 which in ordinai-y society is indicated by the expression 
 " your obedient servant." The government of a colony 
 should indeed be a strictly paternal government ; that is 
 to say, it should be strictly for the benefit of the child, 
 and should pass from rigid law to wise advice and good 
 example as the child advances to maturity. It is no 
 longer possible for us, and would no longer be tolerated 
 by the public opinion of the country, to say, " Such and 
 such a place belongs to us. It is a long way off. We 
 will send thither all the scum and filth of our own 
 population. If the colonists there don't like it, it's a 
 great pity, but it can't be helped." The time for such 
 treatment of our dependencies is for ever gone; and, 
 indeed, no return to it has been contemplated, even by 
 those who are looking upon transportation as our only 
 source of relief in dealing with convicts. But though 
 Western Australia has positively asked for convicts, and 
 is really in need of labourers, it distinctly refuses to 
 receive any but the very best and most hopeful ; those, 
 in fact, who in our own country, might be safely trusted 
 with freedom, especially under a system which should 
 secure the fulfilment of the conditions on which tickets- 
 of-leave are granted. But to supply the labour of a new 
 country from the half-reformed vice and idleness of our 
 own, is surely to lay a very rotten foundation for the 
 future greatness of the State. With all its energy and 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT, 97 
 
 high spirit, there is still a certain coarseness and 
 vulgarity about colonial life which is extremely offensive. 
 Even the honest pursuit of wealth, though highly bene- 
 ficial to all classes of society, needs to be subordinated to 
 pursuits which are in themselves far higher, and without 
 which the pursuit of wealth soon ceases to be beneficial 
 and even to be honest. Many people have become exceed- 
 ingly rich who were not even clever, but only lucky. And 
 even the cleverness which is necessary for commercial 
 success is extremely narrow, when compared with the 
 vast capacities of the human mind and the almost 
 boundless regions which lie open to the thought and 
 affections of men. Eich men actually engaged in busi- 
 ness are often, in our own country, scholars, men of the 
 utmost refinement, exceedingly generous and patriotic, 
 reverent' and godly; and they are this because in our 
 own country scholarship, literature, art, religion, have 
 through many generations held the highest place in 
 public, estimation. Taking our whole history, the aris- 
 tocracy of wealth *is a novelty. It is a new thing that 
 a man's influence, social and political, should depend 
 simply and nakedly upon the balance at his banker's. 
 In fact, this is felt to be so disgraceful a social revolu- 
 tion, that there are many who regard wealth itself with 
 a foolish and irrational suspicion, and who seem to 
 imagine that commercial success involves of necessity 
 the absence of those subtile and nameless graces which 
 characterise the gentleman. At any rate, against the 
 aristocracy of mere wealth there are in this country 
 almost numberless protests, and bulwarks high and 
 strong, which can be removed, if at all, only by very 
 slow degrees. The court of an hereditary sovereign, the 
 lords spiritual and temporal, the church, the universities, 
 
 H 
 
98 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 the etiquette of tlie bar and of the medical profession, 
 the mere sense of antiquity even — these things, and a 
 thousand others, forbid that for some time to come the 
 almighty dollar should be the only god of our idolatry. 
 Not, indeed, that we are wholly without warning of ten- 
 dencies towards that most debasing of all religions, the 
 worship of mammon, which may make even the bravest 
 cautious, if not afraid. In the colonies, however, the 
 commercial element is almost everything. The personal 
 influence of the court and of the aristocracy is reduced 
 to a minimum ; even religion itself seems wholly eclipsed 
 by its energetic and not too scrupulous rival ; and it 
 seems still to be considered necessary that the piety of 
 the mother-country should be taxed to provide both 
 clergymen and endowments for the religious edification 
 of some of the most flourishing of colonial communities. 
 The only thing that can preserve the commerce of the ' 
 colonies from degenerating into selfishness and cunning, 
 vulgarity and avarice, is a very high moral tone, a 
 chivalrous uprightness, and a law of Tionour that shall 
 penetrate through every part of society. Is it very likely 
 that this will either be produced or even suffered to 
 remain possible where a large proportion of the popula- 
 tion consists of half-reformed convicts ? A noble 
 ancestry is the source of far more good than people 
 often suppose ; and to have good reason to be ashamed 
 of his father is a curse and blight upon any man ; and 
 no colony can hope to be very noble or high-spirited 
 whose fathers have been provided for it from Millbank 
 or Portland. 
 
 The colonies, then, if any such there be, who really 
 wish to receive our convicts, must be extremely short- 
 sighted ; and it is very doubtful whether the mother- 
 
ON CONATCCT MANAGEMENT. 99 
 
 country, with her far larger experience, could honourably 
 bestow upon them so dangerous and even so fatal a gift ; 
 and, as has been already said, even transportation to 
 Western Australia would do nothing whatever towards 
 solving that problem which is just now puzzling the 
 wisest among us. The convicts that Western Australia 
 wants to receive are precisely those which we need have 
 little difficulty in disposing of ; and those whom we can 
 see no way of disposing of, constitute precisely that class 
 with which Western Australia will have nothing to do. 
 Moreover, to find plenty of work for a liberated convict, 
 and an easy road to prosperity, is not a punishment, but 
 a reward. The men whom this fate awaits are not 
 "liable," but as Sir Joshua Jebb says, "eligible" for 
 transportation. Of transportation, then, we may per- 
 haps venture to say, that at the best it is extremely 
 inadequate to meet our present if not our future necessi- 
 ties. As a punishment it would in many cases be 
 entirely useless, and it is tending to become after no 
 long time in every case impossible. 
 
 There remains, then, for our criminal classes, 
 imprisonment in our own country ; and it is not difficult 
 to perceive some, at least, of those conditions which may 
 be expected to render imprisonment effective, primarily 
 for the protection of society, and secondarily, wherever 
 it may be possible, for the reformation of the criminal. 
 In the case of imprisonment for life, society is com- 
 pletely protected from the prisoner himself, and the 
 conditions of such an imprisonment will be determined 
 by two considerations : first, how to benefit society by, 
 deterring from actual crime all that unhappily large 
 class of imperfectly tamed human beings who are always 
 standing on the edge of it ; an-d then, how to improve 
 
 h2 
 
100 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 the criminal himself. Such imprisonment, therefore, 
 must be made unmistakeably penal and painful. Though 
 it is to end only with the life of the prisoner, it must be 
 from first to last a discipline of sorrow. There must be 
 no single moment in its whole duration in which an 
 honest man sorely tempted to take the wages of sin 
 shall have the slightest excuse for desiring it. Its 
 maximum of comfort must be, if possible, a little below 
 the minimum of comfort which the poorest honest man 
 may reasonably expect. And inasmuch as however 
 turbulent a prisoner may become he will never be set at 
 liberty excepting to be carried to his grave, the faintest 
 trace of rebellion, the slightest outburst of insubordina- 
 tion, should be visited with immediate and severe 
 punishment, by solitude, darkness, temporary starvation, 
 or flogging. This may no doubt sound extremely brutal 
 to anybody who fails to consider that it is precisely the 
 brute part of a man that imprisonment and its accompani- 
 ments are intended to tame ; or who does not remember 
 that society is greater than the individual, and must be 
 preserved, even though every criminal should be destroyed. 
 A prisoner confined for life should be made clearly to 
 understand that for him the jail is henceforth his world, 
 that no good behaviour will ever in this world advance 
 him out of it, and that excepting the narrow strip of 
 experience that lies between the maximum and minimum 
 of prison comfort, he must regard the rewards of amend- 
 ment and the fruits of reformation as purely spiritual 
 and personal, consisting in the delights of a good -con- 
 science, a sense of reconciliation to God, and in Him to 
 all good men, and the hope of that better world where 
 the discipline of sufiering shall be no longer needed. To 
 such a one a prison chaplain may devoto his tenderest 
 
ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 101 
 
 care, and present without hesitation or douht the nohlest 
 promises of Christ's religion ; and such a one, finding 
 even in this life and his own bitter experience that 
 mercy and truth have met together, may come to' regard 
 even his imprisonment as the cl-oss that Christ bids him 
 take up, and as that death which is in fact only the 
 being born into a true life. 
 
 But only a minority of criminals can be imprisoned 
 for life. After a certain number of years the majority 
 will be set at liberty, and their imprisonment should be 
 of a kind to teach them such lessons as they will never 
 afterwards forget. The chances of their reformation it 
 is extremely difficult to estimate ; for while on the one 
 hand those whose terms of imprisonment are short may 
 be presumed to be the less criminal and therefore the 
 more improveable class, yet on the other hand their 
 short term of imprisonment means also a short term of 
 discipline and instruction. But in this case, as in all 
 others, the good cf society must be first considered* 
 Perhaps it might be possible to devise some expedient 
 by which, while the disgrace of a first and short 
 imprisonment was lessened, its pain should be rendered 
 exceedingly acute. 
 
 It is almost wholly on the reformatory and secondary 
 side of punishment that we need examine the value of 
 rewards, gratuities, commutation of sentence, and so 
 on. Gratuities should in every case be strictly earned. 
 A free labourer can earn enough to keep not himself 
 only, but also his wife and family. A prisoner ought 
 to be compelled, if possible, to earn at least as much as 
 will keep himself and pay the rent of his cell. When 
 he does more than this, it might then as a matter of 
 favour be determined that, if his conduct were other- 
 
102 ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 
 
 wise satisfactory, a portion of his surplus earnings 
 should be reserved for his own use when he is dis- 
 charged, or devoted to the use of those, if there he any, 
 who by his misconduct and imprisonment have been left 
 to poverty or the parish. The earnings of a prisoner 
 should be strictly calculated, and he should be credited 
 according to what he really does, and not according to 
 what an average workman might be fairly expected to do. 
 It should be clearly understood that whatever privi- 
 leges or relaxations may be thought necessary, a man's 
 imprisonment should last during the whole time 
 specified in the sentence of the judge. A convict 
 released with a ticket-of-leave should be made clearly to 
 understand that he is still a prisoner though he wears 
 no distinguishing badges, and that every policeman he 
 meets is one of his jailers. There might be many 
 modifications of police- supervision by which its effec- 
 tiveness might be increased and its vexatiousness 
 diminished ; but nothing can excuse the scandalous 
 negligence which has turned loose on the metropolis 
 and the great towns of the kingdom a swarm of dan- 
 gerous ruffians who might quite easily have been 
 watched and put back into prison long before they had 
 committed any serious new mischief. Even the existing 
 laws, if thoroughly executed, furnish far better safe- 
 guards than any which society for some time past has 
 been suffered to enjoy. Anyhow — Sir Joshua Jebb or 
 Sir Walter Crofton, English system or Irish system, 
 transportation or hard labour at home — let it be fairly 
 understood that the good are in all cases to be preferred 
 to the bad, peaceful citizens to thieves and cut-throats, 
 and genuine beneficial results to theoretic perfection 
 and the completeness of " a system." 
 
MODEL SERMONS/ 
 
 Preachers seem very slow to avail themselves of the 
 advice which has lately been lavished upon them by the 
 " secular" press. Eeligion and daily life are perpetually 
 coming into contact, in spite of solemn warnings and 
 endeavours more or less honourable to keep them com- 
 pletely separate. Such journals as The Times and the 
 Saturday Review, though they very frequently pass their 
 judgments upon the Church, and sometimes even upon 
 theological dogmas, do so always under protest, and as if 
 graciously condescending to the weaknesses of common 
 mortals. There are many people in a Christian country 
 who, for some reason or other, spend a good deal of their 
 time in reading the Bible and in the worship of God. 
 
 * From the Journal of Sacred Literature, July, 1864. 
 
 Sermons on Our Lord Jesus Christ, and' on His Blessed Mother. 
 By his Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. Dublin: James Duffy. 1864. 
 
 Sermons on the Manifestation of the Son of Ood; with a 
 Prefaee, addressed to Laymen on the present position of the 
 Clergy of the Church of England, and an Appendix, on the Testi- 
 mony of Scripture and the Church as to the possibility of pardon in 
 the Future State. By the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davies, M.A. 
 London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. 1864. 
 
 The Divine Treatment of Sin. By James Baldwin Brown, B.A. 
 London : Jackson, Walford, and Hodder. 1864. 
 
 Sermons preached in Manchester. By Alexander Maclaren. 
 London and Cambridge : Macmillan. 1863. 
 
104 MODEL SERMONS. 
 
 Moreover, it has somehow come to pass that the Church, 
 represented hy certain lords spiritual, is an Estate of the 
 Realm. It has its place in Parliament, vast possessions, 
 and a status perhaps higher than any other, excepting 
 that of the Sovereign. Indeed, not a few of the Queen's 
 prerogatives belong to her as Head of the Church ; while 
 in fact the law refuses to separate the Church fi'om the 
 nation. And so the leading journals are compelled to 
 humour those little weaknesses which are able to express 
 themselves so strongly. The dis-establishment of re- 
 ligion would require a change, root and branch, of all 
 English law and administration. Whether for good or 
 for evil, it would unquestionably alter the royal prero- 
 gative, the constitution of Parliament, and the general 
 feeling of Englishmen about religion. Englishmen 
 might be better or worse for the change, but they would 
 certainly be different. Eeligion, therefore, must needs 
 be discussed in the leading journals ; not indeed on the 
 Divine side, as the mystic bond which unites the spirits 
 of men with Him who made them in His own image, but 
 on the commercial side, as a thing the nation pays for 
 with hard cash. The priest and the policeman are 
 equally needed, bought, paid for, tolerated, dismissed, at 
 the nation's will ; and for that reason they both alike are 
 subjected to the criticism of that noble institution the 
 British press. 
 
 But in the superabundance of its benevolence the 
 British press has sometimes condescended to give such 
 advice to the ministers of religion as might prevent their- 
 being ignominiously dismissed by the people who pay 
 them their wages- "You are a poor stupid set," says 
 the echo, if not the voice, of public opinion ; " but really 
 if you would not mind acknowledging it, and remaining 
 
MODEL SERMONS. 105 
 
 true to what you must know is your character, we don't 
 rafadL trying to put up with your silliness. The fact is, 
 we don't care a straw about anything you say to us ; but 
 Sunday is an extremely slow day, and we shouldn't in 
 the least know what to do with it unless we went to 
 church. But we never dream of going to church to be 
 made to think, to be teased and worried and argued 
 with ; much less do we go to church to be told "how to 
 manage our daily business, and upon what principles to 
 buy and sell and get gain. A silly sermon is of course 
 entirely uninteresting, but it doesn't irritate us ; we can 
 sit quietly for twenty minutes till it's over, and be 
 thankful that once a week at least we are relieved from 
 the anxiety of consulting price lists and telegrams, and 
 required. only with moderate decorum to listen dreamily 
 to subjects which may be either true or false without our 
 losing a single penny." 
 
 " On the whole, therefore," say some of our leading 
 journals, "it is decidedly better that sermons should be 
 silly and stupid ; people go to church to rest, to be 
 comforted, to be, as it were, gently patted on the back 
 and sent home again in peace. If a man has spent 
 thousands of pounds in advertising lies in every news- 
 paper in the British empire, he must no doubt have 
 suffered considerable anxiety ; and how extremely cruel it 
 would be in any minister of religion, when what the poor 
 victim mainly requires is consolation and repose, to 
 torture him by the ungenerous insinuation that adver- 
 tising lies is only one of the many ways in which men 
 break the commandment, ' Thou shalt not steal.' And 
 the fiery bigot, who all through the week has been per- 
 suading himself that the perfection of religion consists 
 in hating all those persons who differ from himself in 
 
106 MODEL SERMONS. 
 
 their opinions about innumerable difficult and abstract 
 propositions, does not go to God's house to be reminded 
 that 'God is love, and whosoever loveth is born of God;' 
 on the contrary, he expects to be reminded that ' the 
 zeal of God's house is eating him up,' and that to hate 
 the prodigal son is the quickest road to the affections of 
 his Father. And the timid believer who is so entirely 
 uncertain about the foundations of his own faith that he 
 dares not on any consideration ask what they are, expects 
 to be told that all is safe and calm, and that every rash 
 enquiry and unholy denial has been long since hushed to 
 silence. "Why don't the ministers of religion humour 
 these little weaknesses, and let pious people have their 
 own way ? They are not paid for troubling Israel, why 
 not let people be at peace?" That is the question 
 which the secular journals have asked so often. 
 
 The four books whose titles are at the head of this 
 essay are a clear proof that, whatever the secular press 
 may think, the ministers of religion believe that they 
 have something more to do in this world than to receive 
 wages ; that in fact their work would remain exactly 
 what it is, though it would be harder for themselves to 
 do it, if they received no wages at all. One is by a 
 Cardinal ; another by an Anglican Eector ; another by a 
 Congregationalist ; another by a Baptist ; and all these 
 preachers are men of note, among the leaders of the 
 several sections of the Church to which they belong. It 
 would indeed be ridiculous to assert that these volumes 
 contain fair samples of the preaching which may be 
 heard every Sunday in church or chapel. They are very 
 far indeed above the average. Nothing can exceed the 
 imbecility of the sentimental twaddle which is un- 
 fortunately to be heard in nearly every Eoman Catholic 
 
MODEL SEKMONS. 107 
 
 pulpit in this country. Even in the English Church 
 there are many country parishes in which the wearied 
 listener can scarcely fail to be lulled to sleep by the dull 
 monotony and empty verbiage of his appointed instructor. 
 And there are conventicles where sermons are preached, 
 of which it is the very highest merit that no human 
 memory can retain them. And in all sections of the 
 Church there are only too often extravagances of 
 fanaticism, outrages upon taste and decorum and re- 
 verence, which are immeasurably more mischievous than 
 the utmost barrenness of clerical imbecility. But none 
 of the sermons in the volumes before us are feeble or 
 common-place. Widely as they diifer from each other, 
 and widely as their authors differ from each other, there 
 is an unmistakeable earnestness and ability ; a know- 
 ledge of much truth and anxiety to communicate it ; a 
 conviction that godliness is the foundation of human 
 blessedness, and that there is a blessedness which we 
 may build upon that foundation ; a belief that God and 
 man, separated as they seem to be by an infinite distance, 
 are yet divinely united — there is this, and much more 
 than this, in which they all agree. And it must not be 
 forgotten that if sermons such as these are rare and 
 exceptional, an average sermon is as near to the best as 
 it is to the worst, and that there are as many sermons 
 above the average as there are below it. Nothing is 
 gained by pretending that preachers are better and wiser 
 than they really are ; and less still, if possible, is gained 
 by refusing to acknowledge the merits they really possess. 
 The sermons of Cardinal Wiseman are, unfortunately, 
 not likely to be read by many Protestants ; even the very 
 title of them. Sermons on our Lord Jesus Christ, and 
 on His Blessed Mother, would be sufficient to repel 
 
108 MODEL SEEMONS. 
 
 almost every Protestant reader. For this exaltation of 
 the Virgin Mary is precisely the feature of Eomanism 
 for which an ordinary Protestant in our own day has least 
 toleration. The political mischiefs of Popery, the foreign 
 supremacy which it implies, and its everlasting meddling 
 with the internal and private affairs of every nation in 
 which it is dominant — these things, which chiefly roused 
 the indignation of our forefathers, and which they were 
 determined at any cost to be rid of, have been for us so 
 completely destroyed that we have almost forgotten that 
 they ever existed. Moreover, the cultus of St. Mary is 
 one of those difi'erences, one of those marked character- 
 istics of Eomanism, which not even the most superficial 
 observer can fail to perceive. In the Oxford Declaration, 
 and in the unrighteous decisions of the University in the 
 case of Professor Jowett, there is precisely that as- 
 sumption of infallibility, and that determination to put 
 down opposition, not by force of reason, but by some 
 form, more or less refined, of physical force, out of which 
 every Romanist error could, and out of which, if left 
 alone, the worst of Romanist errors unquestionably 
 would, arise ; and yet neither the Oxford Declaration 
 nor the mean and shabby injustice of the University to 
 the Regius Professor of Greek, would have been possible 
 without the energetic and enthusiastic co-operation of 
 the evangelical party. But every evangelical clergyman, 
 by virtue simply of having two eyes in his head, can see 
 an image of the Virgin and Child if he goes into a Roman 
 Catholic chapel ; and as he looks upon what he cannot 
 but regard as impiety and idolatry, it is not impossible 
 that the same evil spirit may visit him which possessed 
 the cruellest of the inquisitors, when they tortured and 
 burned the bodies of men for the good of their souls. 
 
MODEL SEEMONS. 109 
 
 Yet, surely, it is worth while to reflect that all power is 
 of God ; and that eyerything which lives, lives by virtue 
 of what is good in it, not by virtue of what is evil. A 
 naked, unsophisticated lie is almost as rare as perfect 
 truth ; nay, it is probably more rare. Even superstition 
 must have some foundation of reverence for that which 
 ought to be above us. It is not the object of this essay, 
 and it is wholly unnecessary, to repeat those arguments 
 .against the Romanist cidtus of St. Mary, which have 
 long ago satisfied every intelligent Protestant. But 
 many arguments offered by Protestants who are not 
 intelligent are very far indeed from being satisfactory, and 
 are completely demolished in Cardinal Wiseman's ser- 
 mons. Surely in this even the narrowest bigot should find 
 cause for thankfulness and rejoicing. We ought to be 
 devoutly thankful when we discover that even those of 
 our fellow-Christians whom we believe to be in error, 
 are not so much in eri'or as we supposed they were. It 
 may seem to us dangerous and profane, and even idola- 
 trous, to reverence the Virgin as the Roman Catholic 
 Church reverences her; but it should be some consolation 
 for us to discover that the Roman Church does by no 
 means reverence her as it reverences Almighty God. If 
 we have sometimes thought that not only in pictures and 
 images, but even in the thoughts and afl'ections of 
 Ronian Catholic Christians, the Virgin is greater and 
 more beautiful than the Child, we ought to be thankful 
 to be assured that her greatness, and beauty, and love 
 are regarded as the eifect and continual revelation of the 
 love and glory of Jesus Christ. If, out of reverence to 
 the Bible, we often wonder how Christian people can 
 believe what seems to us incredible, and fail to perceive 
 what seems to us obvious, we ought to be glad to learn 
 
110 MODEL SEKMONS. 
 
 that their beliefs and disbeliefs are not the rejection of 
 Holy Scripture, but only interpretations of it which 
 differ from ours. If we sometimes think that they too 
 confidently attribute infallibility to the traditions and 
 councils of the Church, and to the successor of St. Peter, 
 we should candidly acknowledge that they regard such 
 infallibility as the illumination of that Spirit whom 
 Jesus Christ promised that He might lead the Church into 
 the whole truth. And if we reject as unauthoritative the 
 explanations of Cardinal Wiseman, we should, at any 
 rate, be candid enough to hold him no longer responsible 
 for those errors which in plain language he repudiates. 
 
 The cultus of the saints, though it has Unhappily 
 degenerated into superstition, yet rests like so many 
 other superstitions on genuine reverence and love. It is 
 the Church's testimony to the fact that Chiist has 
 abolished death, and that in Him heaven and earth, the 
 seen and the unseen, are united. It is the Church's 
 testimony that the nearer God's children come to Him 
 the more perfectly they love one another ; and do God's 
 commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His Word. 
 
 " Your mother, the Church, will tell you," says Cardinal Wise- 
 man, " as you read the names in the Catholic Calendar, ' These 
 are my children ; this is the hirthday to life, to true and eternal 
 life, of a brother of yours, a child of mine, nursed in the same 
 bosom that bore you, fed with the same milk which has given 
 vigottr to you, taught by the same mouth from which you have 
 learned ; this was a child of mine, to whom his Lord and Father 
 gave five talents, and sent away to a distant region from Himself, 
 or rather He withdrew Himself from him, and those talents by 
 his trading he has doubled in the sight of his Lord ; he has been 
 a merchant, and has laid up for himself treasures in heaven, 
 where the moth consumes not, and the rust destroyeth not. It is 
 a St. Francis, who gave up all for Christ, that he might the more 
 completely win and embrace Christ ; it is a St. Vincent of Paul, 
 
MODEL SEEMONS. Ill 
 
 who, whatever were the riches which the great ones of the world 
 poured into his open arms, lavished them again with no less open 
 hands on the poor of Christ, and, for all that he cast away, laid 
 up ten times the amount in heaven: this is the child far away 
 from us, whose birthday we commemorate. And the other, this 
 was Lawrence or Stephen, a child faU of ardour, and zeal, and the 
 love of God, who went forth to fight His battles ; who fought, who 
 conquered and triumphed, and he now reigns glorious in heaven, 
 and his name is a very benediction in the mouths of all.' And 
 you come and tell me that it is folly to think more of them, that 
 they are dead, and for ever gone, whose bones are crumbled to 
 dust, whose souls have forgotten men. And I ask in return. Is it 
 your opinion that heaven is a place in which, whatever is honour- 
 able to man, whatever is most precious to his soul, whatever is 
 most beautiful in his nature, after the corruption of sin has 
 defiled it, that love, in short, which is the very nature of God, is 
 a thing not only unknown there, but banished thence, and never 
 to be admitted ? Tell me, then, that you consider heaven to be a 
 place in which the soul is to be employed for eternity, in looking 
 or diving into the unfathomable abyss of love which God is, and 
 seeing that that love is a love not merely sleeping and inactive, 
 but exercising itself in ten thousand ways, with all the resources 
 of infinite power, and yet believe that in that ocean you must not 
 lovewhat God loves. 
 
 " Tell me that you believe heaven to be a looking into the face 
 of Christ, and there wondering for ever at the infinite love, and 
 tenderness, and mercy, and compassion, and affection beaming 
 from it, and those wounds received that men might be redeemed 
 at such a price. — Tell me, that it consists in the happiness of 
 loving your Saviour for what He has done for man, and endeavour- 
 ing as much as possible to be like to Him, and that yet you must 
 contrive not to love that which is the very spring of all which you 
 admire in Him, and endeavour not to be like Him in that in 
 which He is most amiable to us. For there He is interesting 
 Himself for men, showing His wounds, and pleading still by them 
 with His heavenly Father, and are we to imderstand that we 
 must not join in such an office, and must not take deHght therein ? 
 
 XeH me how you understand heaven to be the association of 
 
 holy souls, united by a bond of the strictest mutual love forming 
 their very life, and yet when one who has been dear to you on earth 
 comes into that same happy region in which you enjoy bliss, it is 
 
112 MODEL SEEMONS. 
 
 to be understood that you will receive Mm as a stranger, you wiU 
 know nothing of him, and it will be a glory to you that your heart 
 is unfettered by the ties of duty, gratitude, or love? — Tell me, 
 have you accepted heaven from God on these conditions ? Have 
 you insisted that when your soul has been caUed forth from this 
 earth, and you are to ascend to heaven, that instant— that 
 moment, it is your intention — for if it is God's will it ought to be 
 — to forget child, and wife, and parent, and to care no more for 
 them ? Oh, if the precept of renouncing father and mother and 
 whatever we love on earth for Christ's sake, be not truly the 
 price for which we obtain a hundredfold enjoyment hereafter, 
 hard, indeed, would be the condition, were it thus made the 
 terms, not for obtaining more, but for losing even that for 
 ever ! " * 
 
 There is a truth in this extract which neither Romanist 
 nor Protestant can afford to lose, and which the nar- 
 rower forms of Protestantism are in great danger of 
 losing. If heaven he a state of inactivity and forget- 
 fulness, it is unquestionably a misfortune for any earnest 
 and loving man to go there. There is a great abun- 
 dance of reasons why our reverence for those holy men 
 and women who have passed out of this world — nay, 
 why even our belief that they love and are eager to help - 
 those who are still struggling with the difficulties, and 
 often losing their way in the mist and darkness of the 
 world — should take a very different form of expression 
 from that which we find in the Eoman Church. But it 
 would be far better even to ask the intercession of de- 
 parted saints on our behalf, as we continually do ask the 
 prayers of those holy men and women who are still 
 living in our midst, than that we should believe that 
 death has power to rol) God's children of their love, and 
 zeal, and work. In fact, we attach far too great import- 
 
 * Pp. 296—299. 
 
MODEL SEKMONS. 113 
 
 ance to death, as the controYersy now so earnest about 
 the future state of the wicked only too clearly demon- 
 strates ; we are in great danger of regarding it as a vast 
 gulf, which not only the love of man, but the love of God 
 Himself, is unable to cross. There are not a few divines 
 who seem to believe that it changes not only the circum- 
 stances and accidents of human beings, but even the very 
 essence of human nature; so that after death, suffering can 
 bring no regret, punishment no improvement, the know- 
 ledge of what sin really is no repentance, the love of God 
 no hope, the redemption that is in Christ no salvation. 
 
 There is a large part of Cardinal Wiseman's teaching 
 which seems to us to rest upon a very slender foundation, 
 either of Scripture or reason ; indeed, it is to him no 
 valid ground of objection to any doctrine whatever, that 
 it is wholly irrational and unintelligible. But even for 
 the wildest doctrinal follies, he must have some founda- 
 tion ; and it may astonish many Protestants to learn, 
 that a foundation which, in any case, is to him completely 
 satisfactory, is the Bible. Not, indeed, the Bible inter- 
 preted according to the whims and fancies of ignorance 
 or prejudice, for that would not be the Bible at all ; but 
 the Bible interpreted by the wise and learned, and by the 
 tradition not of yesterday, not of new sects, come newly 
 up, which our fathers knew not, not of some one nation 
 or race, but by that which covers the whole earth and 
 reaches back to the beginnings of Christendom. And 
 surely this is only a more emphatic and more consistent 
 form of the samfe teaching whi,ch is common among 
 ourselves, which is impKed in the work of the ministry 
 and the vocation of the preacher. * 
 
 * The extract that follows ip the text must be taken, not as the 
 authoritative teaching of the Roman Catholio Church, but only at 
 
 I 
 
114 MODEL SERMONS. 
 
 " For all troubles of the mind and spirit," says Cardinal Wise- 
 man, " there is refreshnlent in Jesus. Come unto Him, when 
 now entered upon His heavenly mission, He teaches the multi- 
 tudes, or opens to His apostles the mysteries of faith. And how 
 are ye to come to Him ? By deep and earnest study of His holy 
 Word, wherein, as it were. His whole image is reflected, read in 
 humility, docility, and disinterested readiness to obey His calls, 
 rendered fruitful by fervent and persevering prayer ; by listening 
 to His Word, as expounded to you by His ministers, gladly 
 receiving such lights as may serve to guide you towards the 
 settling of your doubts, seriously weighing such evidence as may 
 
 the most as Cardinal Wiseman's opinion of what his Church does 
 not forbid him to teach. But no Cardinal can overrule the 
 decrees of the Council of Trent, which has long ago determined 
 the use that the faithful may make of the Holy Scriptures: 
 " Praeterea ad coercenda petulantia ingenia decemit, ut nemo, 
 suiE prudentiee innixus, in rebus fidei et morum ad sediiicationem 
 doctrinae Christianee pertinentium, sacram Soripturam ad suos 
 sensus contorquens, contra eum sensum, quem tenuit et tenet 
 sancta mater ecclesia, cujus est judicare de vero sensu et inter- 
 pretatione Scripturarum sanctarum, aut etiam contra unanimem 
 consensum Patrum ipsam Scripturam sacram interpretaxi audeat, 
 etiamsi hujusmodi interpretationes nuUo unijuam tempore in 
 luoem edendsB forent. Qui contravenerint per ordinaiios de- 
 clarentur, et poenis a jure statutis puniantur" — fSessio iv. Deeret. 
 de editione et usu Sacrorum Lihrorum). The following is the 
 English translation of one of the Rules of the Congregation of the 
 Index, as published in 1564 in pursuance of the decision of the 
 Council of Trent. 
 
 " Inasmuch as it is manifest from experience, that if the Holy 
 Bible translated into the vulgar tongue be indigcriminately 
 allowed to every one, the temerity of men will cause more evil 
 than good to arise from it ; it is, on this point, referred to the 
 judgment of the bishops or inquisitors, who may, by the advice 
 of the priest or confessor, permit the reading of the Bible trans- 
 lated into the vulgar tongue by Catholic authors, to those persons 
 whose faith or piety they apprehend will be augmented, and not 
 injured by it; and this permission they must have in writing. 
 But, if any one shall have the presumption to read or possess it 
 without such written permission, he shall not receive absolution 
 
MODEL SEEMONS. 115 
 
 be laid before you in candour and charity, however opposed to 
 your former opinions, thankfully accepting such explanations and 
 representations as may correct the prepossessions instUled by 
 ignorant or mistaken teachers. For thus we learn that, even in 
 His lifetime, they who wished to come unto Jesus with advantage 
 were not content to stand aloof, following Him in the crowd, nor 
 yet ventured to approach directly, and of themselves, before Him; 
 but rather ' came unto Philip, who was of Bethsaida of Galilee, 
 
 until he have first delivered up such Bible to the ordinary. Book- 
 sellers, however, who shall sell, or otherwise dispose of Bibles in 
 the vulgar tongue, to any person not having such permission, 
 shall forfeit the value of the books, to be appUed by the bishop to 
 some pious use, and be subjected to such other penalties as the 
 bishop shall judge proper, according to the quality of the offence. 
 But regulars shall neither read nor purchase such Bibles without 
 a special licence from their superiors." At the same time, it 
 ought not to be denied that there is a certain flexibility about the 
 practice of the Roman Catholic Church, especially in Protestant 
 countries, which is a real benefit, however inconsistent it may seem 
 with many of the Romanist pretensions. Infallibility and 
 science, infallibility and intellectual liberty and culture, are wholly 
 incompatible; and the fate of the Home and Foreign Beview 
 must surely have done something towards convincing Enghsh 
 Catholics of that fact. But a Bible without note or comment, is, 
 on the one hand, impossible, because every translation in itself 
 implies a commentary ; and on the other hand, it is undesirable, 
 because the most ignorant people require to be taught not to 
 repeat, parrot-hke, mere words of Scripture, but to get at the 
 real meaning of those words. It is impossible for any English- 
 man to begin the study of the Holy Scriptures without a bias in 
 one direction or another; and, besides that, the Bible, though 
 above all other books " it is not for an age, but for all time,'' was 
 actually produced at a remote period, and in places far distant 
 from those we live in, and in the midst of social and political 
 surroundings wholly unlike those with which we are familiar. 
 The study of the Bible, therefore, must necessarily be far more 
 fruitful under judicious guidance. If we teach men that it is one 
 of their most solemn duties to read the Bible from one end to the 
 other, we ought to provide them with such assistance as shall 
 make the understanding of the Bible possible and easy. 
 
 l2 
 
116 MODEL SERMONS. 
 
 and desired him, saying : Sir, we would see Jesus' (Jolin xii. al). 
 And thus, likewise, will the ministry of His servants, however 
 unworthy, often procure a speedier and happier acquaintance 
 with Him, and readier access to the peace and refreshment of 
 His knowledge, than your own direct and unaided efforts."* 
 
 Many of the sermons published in the volunae before 
 us were preached by Cardinal Wiseman in Eome, by 
 command of the Pope, Leo XII, on the Sundays from 
 Advent to Easter. " The course of sermons annually 
 prescribed went over a limited portion of the year, 
 comprising always the same Sundays, the same feasts, 
 and the same ecclesiastical seasons. As has been inti- 
 mated above, it commenced with Advent and ended with 
 Lent. Hence the same Gospels, those read during a 
 few months only, had to suggest topics for the sermons. 
 Hence the only great mysteries of our Lord which the 
 ecclesiastical calendar brought under the contemplation 
 of the faithful, were those of the infancy and the 
 passion." t 
 
 And these are precisely the mysteries which require 
 the firmest and most delicate handling. The denial of 
 Christ's humanity is, in fact, the denial of Christianity ; 
 while, on the other hand, it is possible so to present to 
 men the earthly life of Jesus Christ, that they shall be 
 constrained to know Him only in that way in which St. 
 Paul affirms that we should no longer know Him — that is, 
 " after the flesh." It is possible to present the incar- 
 nation to the intellect and imagination of men in such a 
 manner as virtually to deny that it was expedient for the 
 disciples that Christ should go away. Not to mention, 
 for the present, the exceedingly coarse form in which 
 
 * Pp. 128, 129. t Preface, p. v. 
 
MODEL SEEMONS. 117 
 
 Cardinal Wiseman presents to us the doctrine of 
 Christ's propitiation, his whole account of the earthly 
 life of Jesus is far too sensuous. It seems often to 
 degrade, not God only, but eyen humanity. His ac- 
 count of Christ's passion resembles more than anything 
 else those ghastly images of the crucified Saviour which 
 shock and -disgust us in almost every Eoman Catholic 
 church. It is by no means certain that the physical 
 sufferings of Christ were greater than those of many of 
 His disciples, and the mental sufferings of our Lord are, 
 I think, as will appear further on, entirely misunderstood 
 and misrepresented by Cardinal Wiseman. Moreover, 
 exactly in proportion as our attention is directed to the 
 fact that Christ was a real man, precisely in the same 
 proportion are we reminded that His body must have 
 been subject to those laws to which all human bodies are 
 subject. However severely wounded a human being 
 may be, he cannot possibly lose more blood than his' 
 body contains ; and the physical agonies, and especially 
 the loss of blood, upon which Cardinal Wiseman dwells 
 with repulsive minuteness in his description of the 
 Saviour's passion, would have been possible only if the 
 body of Jesus Christ had been wholly different from the 
 ordinal^ bodies of men. Not only is Cardinal Wise- 
 man's account repulsive and incredible, but it is widely 
 different from the New Testament narrative. We read 
 in a not undisputed passage in St. Luke,* " His sweat 
 was, as it were, great drops of blood falling to the 
 ground." But, accepting this verse (which I have, at 
 
 * Lxike xxii. 44. Wanting in A, B ; but the passage is found 
 in the Oodex Sinaiticus, and nLachmann retains it in the text 
 (1843). " Neo sane ignorandum a nobis est et in Girecis et in 
 
118 MODEL SEEMONS. 
 
 any rate, no doctrinal reason for hesitating to accept), 
 how widely it differs from the following : — 
 
 " Look at the agony of your Saviour, and see how, in it. His 
 sweat is blood ! Yea, and blood so profusely shed, without 
 wound or stroke, as to flow upon the ground ! 
 
 " There are plants in the luxurious East, my dearly beloved 
 brethren, which men gash and out, that from them may distil the 
 precious balsams they contain ; but that is ever the most sought 
 and valued which, issuing forth of its own accord pure and un- 
 mixed, trickles down like tears upon the parent tree. And so it 
 seems to me, we may, without disparagement, speak of the 
 precious stream of our dear Redeemer's blood, when, forced 
 from His side in abundant iiow, it came mixed with another 
 mysterious fluid. When shed by the cruel inflictions of His 
 enemies, by their nails, their thorns and sooiirges, there is a pain- 
 ful association with the brutal instruments that drew it, as 
 though, in some way, their defilement could attaint it. But here 
 we have the first yield of that saving and life-giving heart, 
 gushing forth spontaneously, pure and untouched by the unclean 
 hand of man, dropping as dew upon the ground. It is the first 
 juice of the precious vine, before the wine-press hath bruised its 
 grapes, richer and sweeter to the loving and sympathizing soul 
 than what is afterwards pressed out. It is, every drop of it, ours; 
 and, alas ! how painfully so ! For here no lash, no impious pahn, 
 no pricking thorn hath called it forth ; but our sins, yes, our suis, 
 the executioners, not of the flesh, but of the heart of Jesus, have 
 driven it all out, thence to water that garden of sorrows ! Oh, is 
 it not dear to us ? Is it not gathered up by our affections with far 
 more reverence and love than by virgins of old was the blood of 
 martyrs, to be placed for ever in the very sanctuary, yea, witHn 
 the very altar, of our hearts ? " * 
 
 Latinis codicibus complurimis vel de adveniente angelo vel de 
 sudore sanguinis nil scriptum reperiri" A bloody sweat is not 
 physically impossible ; though every red-coloured fluid is not 
 blood, even if it be oiaei dpofifioi aiiiaroi. Bengel says : " Vis 
 particulae, wtrei, cadit super GpofijSoc, non super al/iaTos, ut patet 
 ex epitheto ejusque plurali, KaTapaivovres." But in. the Sinaitie 
 Codex the participle is in the genitive singular. 
 * Pp. 209, 210. 
 
MODEL SEBMONS. 119 
 
 . This gorgeous rhetoric would, perhaps, not be alto- 
 gether unpleasing if it were employed upon a subject lesS 
 wonderful and diyine ; but it presents to us the suf- 
 ferings of Christ in such a way as to degrade Him, and, 
 scarcely less, to degrade ourselves. The same objection 
 may be urged against the Cardinal's Pastorals on 
 Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, published 
 in an appendix to his volume of sermons ; and against 
 eveiy one of those ceremonies in the Eomish Church of 
 which Devotion to the Sacrel Heart is a type. But it 
 is not simply profane, it is in every way ridiculous, to 
 attribute the love of Jesus Christ to His heart rather 
 than to any of the other vital organs of His body. It is 
 all very well to speak of the love of Christ's heart in a 
 metaphor, but everybody knows that the heart has no 
 more to do with the affections than the lungs have ; that 
 whenever our foot slips from metaphor, in matters of 
 this sort, we fall down instantly into absurdity. A 
 picture of Jesus Christ with the actual, physical heart 
 exposed to view, is simply disgusting; and I cannot 
 help regarding the word-pictures of Cardinal Wiseman 
 as even more disgusting. Are we really to turn away 
 from the loving Jesus Himself to a clot of gore, and try 
 to persuade ourselves that that does somehow partake of 
 Christ's divineness ; and would deserve, if we could dis- 
 cover it, to be treasured up by us, or worshipped as the 
 holiest of relics ? When we are asked in this coarse 
 way to know Christ after the flesh, we must not be afraid 
 of irreverence if we straightway reply that, as mere blood, 
 the blood of Christ is no diviner than that which we may 
 find described in any book on human physiology ; that 
 which any chemist could analyse ; that which ought, with 
 utmost celerity, to be buried out of sight. Such 
 
120 MODEL SERMONS. 
 
 teaching as Cardinal Wiseman's on matters of this sort, 
 produces, in those who believe it, a very mischievoas 
 sentimentalism ; and in some who disbelieve it, a very 
 dangerous loathing and contempt for sacred things. 
 
 His description of Christ's scourging, and the actual 
 crucifixion, is even more disgusting than that of the 
 agony in the garden of Gethsemane : — 
 
 " There seems to be no mercy, no pity, for Jesus, either on 
 earth or in heaven. He is abandon.ed to the anger of God and 
 the fury of man ; the executioners surround Him with saTOge 
 delight, and shower on H^m their cruel blows till He is covered 
 with blood, and gashed and swollen over all His sacred body ! 
 
 " See, now, how the brutal executioners proceed to the task of 
 inflictini cruel torment upon your dear Redeemer. Having 
 bound Him to the pillar, they deal their furious blows upon Bis 
 sacred shoulders, back, chest, and arms. First, His tender flesh 
 swells and inflames, then the skin is gradually torn, and the 
 blood oozes through ; gashes begin to be formed, and wider 
 streams pour down in profusion. At length every part is covered 
 by one continuous bruise ; gash has run into gash ; wide rents 
 meet in every direction, and flesh is torn in flakes from the bones. 
 One wretch succeeds another in the cruel work till they are tired, 
 and their patience, though not that of their victim, is ex- 
 hausted. . . But another scene of extraordinary barbarity yet 
 awaits us. The soldiers have exhausted the power which the 
 law put into their hands; but theii fierce desires are not ex- 
 hausted. They know that Jesus is charged with declaring Him- 
 self King of the Jews, and they proceed to make this just claim 
 the ground of a strange mockery. They prepare for Him a new 
 unheard-of diadem, woven of hard, sharp thorns, and place it upon 
 His sacred head. Then they press it down on every side, till its 
 points pierce the skin and penetrate His flesh. Now, behold 
 your Saviour stOl further disfigured and dishonoured. Before, 
 His body had been torn, but even the scourge had respected His 
 venerable head ; but now this is assailed by this invention of 
 ingenious cruelty, which, under the repeated strokes of the reed 
 given Him for a sceptre, and taken from His hand, changes its posi- 
 tion, and iniUcts at every blow a new or a deeper wound ; His hair is 
 all entangled ia the knotty wreath, and clotted with His sacred 
 
MODEL SEKMONS. 121 
 
 blood ; His fair temples and noble forehead are strained and 
 pressed down by it, while it shoots its points into them, and 
 opens so many fountains of life, waters of salvation, springing 
 warm from His aifectionate heart. See how they trickle down, 
 first slowly, then in faster and thicker streams, tUl His sacred 
 face and neck are streaked with blood, which running down over 
 His body, mingles with that flowing from the gashes of the 
 scourge. . . 
 
 " Consider, now, the cruel torments which our dear Jesus must 
 have endured during His three hours' remaining on the cross. . . 
 From head to foot He is one wound ; His head, if it press against 
 the cross, is gored by the points of the thorns, which are thus 
 driven deep into it. Truly now are verified, in their truest and 
 saddest sense. His plaintive words, ' The Son of Man hath not 
 where to rest hi? head.' His shoulders and back, which are 
 pressed necessarily against it, are flayed and torn with the inhu- 
 man stripes which have been inflicted upon Him. Against these 
 open wounds does this cruel bed press, so that any change of 
 posture, so far from relieving Him, only increases His sufi'erings, 
 by grating upon and rending wider the blisters and gashes with 
 which He is covered. But let us not lose sight of those four 
 terrible, but most precious wounds whereby He is fastened on the 
 cross. Each of His hands, each of His feet, is transfixed by a long 
 black naU driven into it with violence, and every moment, by the 
 natural gravitation of His body, tearing wider and wider the rent 
 it has made. Oh ! what a tmarting, torturing pain — what an 
 unceasing sufiering during three hours of crucifixion ! Who, 
 dear Jesus, shall be able to recount all that Thou sufieredst for 
 me in that short space? "* 
 
 Such teaching as this is, however, the consistent and 
 natural result of Cardinal Wiseman's doctrine of the 
 atonement ; so far, at least, as we are able to determine 
 what that doctrine is from this volume of sermons. 
 
 " Hitherto, my brethren," he says in his sermon on the ■' Cha- 
 racter and Sufi'erings of Christ in His Passion," " we have viewed 
 in the person of our suffering Saviour the ' High Priest, holy, 
 
 * From the sermon, " Meditation on the Passion," pp. 205 — 232. 
 
122 MODEL SEBMONS. 
 
 innocent, imdefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than 
 the heavens' (Heb. vii. 26) ; we have now to consider Him in the 
 very opposite character, as the victim charged with the iniquity 
 of the whole people. We have heard His appeal that none 
 could convict Him of sin ; we have seen that appeal more than 
 justified in His passion, by the conduct of His adversaries and the 
 perfection of His own character ; we have now to behold Him, in 
 spite of this personal innocence, doomed to die by the decree of 
 His own Eternal Father, as overcharged with a debt for sia. 
 The sentence of men was, indeed, unjust, which condemned Him 
 as a crimiaal ; that of the Father just, as all must be which He 
 commands : and so strong is the contrast between these two 
 simultaneous sentences upon earth and in heaven, that it appears 
 as if even the small particles of equity which lingered here below 
 after the first fall, were now withdrawn from earth in order that 
 the whole powers of this attribute might be concentrated with 
 greater force in the Almighty arm. It fell from heaven, undi- 
 vided, upon the head of this devoted victim. . When, at length, 
 the fulness of time had come, this voluntary victim, who was to 
 expiate the sins of all, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, stands ready 
 to receive the fatal doom. Two things were necessary to ac- 
 complish His great purpose ; that He should take upon Him the 
 oflfences which He has to atone, and that He should present an 
 equivalent for the debt due to Divine justice for them. 
 
 " In the Garden of Olives the first condition begins to be ful- 
 filled. As the fatal moment prescribed for the commencement of 
 His sufferings arrives, His character and feeHngs undergo the 
 dreadful change. He is no longer regarded by His Father as 
 that beloved Son in whom He expressed Himself well pleased, 
 from the cloud of Mount Tabor ; or whom He had a few days 
 before glorified by a voice from heaven. Instead of this. He sees 
 before Him a culprit, upon whose head lie all the iniquities of 
 men ; all the foul idolatries, and the horrible abominations of the 
 pagan world ; all the rebellions and treasons of His favourite 
 people ; and what is still more grievous, the black ingratitude of 
 those who should taste the fruits of His redemption. Each of 
 the ingredients, every particle of this mass of turpitude, excites 
 His abhorrence in an inconceivable degree ; they are now, for 
 the first time, accumulated upon one subject, and bury from His 
 sight the high dignity of Him whom they oppress. Hence all 
 those feehngs which they must excite in Kim are no less con- 
 
MODEL SERMONS. 123 
 
 centrated against this representative of crime ; the indignation 
 which sent a flaming sword to chase our first parents from 
 Paradise, the wrath which drowned in one deluge the entire race 
 of man, the detestation which rained fire and sulphur upon seven 
 cities, these have all at length' found one common channel into 
 which they can pour their burning stream, and so satisfy a 
 craving justice, tLU now only partially allayed. 
 
 " Oh ! what a corresponding change does this cause in the soul 
 of our dear Redeemer ! : . . He sees His pure soul, incapable in 
 itself of the slightest defilement, now hideously disfigured by 
 millions of abominable crimes, more odious to Him than death. 
 Abashed and degraded. He sinks upon the earth. His mental 
 sorrow is necessarily connected with another dreadfiil suffering; 
 the simultaneous anticipation of every torment inflicted upon Him 
 through His passion. For, as He has to bear the iniquities of 
 the entire race, so must He bear those of His persecutors ; and, 
 in reviewing them all. He necessarily suffers the pangs, by in- 
 flicting which they are to be committed. He feels Himself 
 charged with the treason of Judas, and with the apostasy of Peter. ' 
 Every blasphemous word to be uttered against Himself is a stain 
 which now defiles His soul. Thus does He rehearse in His mind 
 every part of the bloody tragedy which has immediately to com- 
 mence, bearing at once its sufferings and its guilt. Each blow 
 upon His sacred head, not only drives deeper the wreath of thorns 
 which encircles it, but inflicts a far more racking wound in the 
 guilt of sacrilegious profanation which it lays upon Him. Every 
 stroke of the guilty hammer, which forces the nail into His 
 tender palm, not only rends its quivering fibres, and convulses 
 His sensitive frame, but transfixes His soul with a keener anguish, 
 by the impiety against God's anointed wMch it adds to His bur- 
 den of sin. He considers Himself a fallen and a rejected 
 creature ; and this deep sense of degradation generates an anxious 
 timidity hitherto unknown in His conduct. Oh, how is He 
 changed from what we have always hitherto beheld Him ! He 
 has left all His disciples, except three, whom He selects to be the 
 companions of His agony. ' Stay you here and watch with me.' 
 He dreads the eyes of even these three favourite disciples, whom 
 He has selected to be Has companions, and He retires from them 
 in order to pray alone. Three times He returns to receive some 
 consolation from them, and to derive some support from their uniting 
 with Him in prayer. Alas ! He used to be their consolation and 
 
124 MODEL SEEMONS. 
 
 support, He used to exclaim to them, ' Ye of little faith, why do 
 ye fear ? ' Yet now He must recur to them for like encourage- 
 ment, and even in this is doomed to disappointment. How 
 different His prayer from that poured forth in the days of His 
 joy ! ' O my Father, if it is possible, let this chahce pass from 
 me ; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wiUest.' What, 
 then ! Is Thy will no longer to do that of Him who sent Thee, 
 that Thou shouldst distinguish hetween them? Where is now 
 that confidence with which Thou wert wont to exclaim, ' Father, 
 I know that thou hearest me always '? (John xi. 42). Why this 
 conditional, this diffident, this so frequently repeated prayer ? 
 
 " Because He feels HimseK changed into another man ; He 
 calls out as an unworthy sinner, and as such He is unheard. 
 Even an angel from heaven is necessary to support Him in His 
 excess of agony. Oh, what a change again is here ! The 
 heavenly spirits did indeed announce His conception, and siug 
 hymns of joy and glory at His birth ; they came and ministered 
 to Him after His rigorous fast. But that they should have to 
 descend upon such an errand as this, to console their Master, and 
 support Him in His sufferings, this surely is a service never an- 
 ticipated by these faithful ministers of His will. O Lord, what 
 wonder, that with this complicated agony. Thy limbs should fail, 
 Thy pores should break open, and Thy agitated, bursting heart 
 should impel its streams with unnatural violence through Thy 
 trembling Hmbs and body, till its precious drops gush through 
 the skin, and bathe Thee prostrate on the ground, in a sweat of 
 blood! ' Surely He hath borne our infirmities, and carried our 
 
 sorrows ,and the Lord hath la-id on Him the iniquity of us 
 
 aU.' (Isaiah hii. 4 — 6.)" 
 
 This is precisely the heathen doctrine of sacrifice. It 
 represents God as requiring to he propitiated ; exacting 
 from man, or from his representative and surety, the 
 uttermost farthing. It is indeed impossible for any 
 Christian completely to forget that God is love; and 
 therefore, with the additional aid of the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, even the grossest and most heathen form of the 
 doctrine of propitiation may be made to appear Christian. 
 If the Father exacts the penalty, the Son pays it, and 
 
MODEL SEEMONS. 125 
 
 the Father and the Son are one ; and thus the righteous- 
 ness of the Father is reflected upon the Son, and the 
 love of the Son upon the Father. But this can only 
 be accomplished at the cost of a triple heresy. The 
 doctrine of sacrifice that requires this kind of explanation 
 and support is itself heathenish, however carefully its 
 heathenism may be disguised. The separation of the 
 Father from the Son, which is required by the one ex- 
 acting, and the other paying, the penalty of man's sin, 
 is really a "dividing of the substance" of God; while 
 on the other hand, the attempt to demonstrate that both 
 the exaction and the payment of the penalty are by one 
 and the same Divine Being, does truly " confound the 
 persons." The great creed of Christendom is the 
 Nicene Creed, a creed included in the liturgies of all 
 Christian churches that have liturgies. This is the 
 creed recognized by the Council of Trent, as the one 
 sure foundation against which the gates of hell should 
 never prevail.* If, indeed, the creed is little more than 
 an expansion of the baptismal formula, "In the name 
 of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," 
 it does most unmistakeably declare that the Son is " of" 
 the Father, and not the Father "of" the Son. The 
 glory of Christ's sacrifice consists in this, that it is the 
 life of a perfect Son of God ; always with perfect know- 
 ledge, and love, and trust, doing the Father's will. 
 According to the Scriptures, at least according to the 
 teaching -of St. Paul and St. John, Jesus Christ is the 
 very man, the' head of every man, of whom all men 
 participate, in whom they were chosen before the foun- 
 dation of the world, and created to all good works. He 
 
 * Sessio Tertia, Decretum de Symholo Fidei. 
 
126 MODEL SERMONS. 
 
 is moreover represented to us, not only as a living soul, 
 but as a life-giving Spirit. Hence, as comprehending 
 all humanity in Himself, He is represented as offering 
 to God that perfect oblation which alone could satisfy 
 Him, the oblation of the whole human race, perfectly 
 good, and obedient, and loving. Even that oblation 
 would be surely insufficient, would be scarcely better 
 than fictitious, if He who offered it had no power to im- 
 part life, and to make men actually become what they 
 ought to be. His life on earth is in fact represented as 
 the first-fruits of the harvest of humanity ; " Christ the 
 first-fruits, and then those of Christ, at His appearing," 
 the members of His body, the separate individuals of 
 the race which is what it is by reason of its relation to 
 Him. Hence the sacrifice of Christ is the very model and 
 pattern of all human nobleness ; it blesses us by being re- 
 peated in us; by our "knowing the fellowship of Christ's 
 sufferings, and being made conformable to his death." 
 
 This is beautifully expressed by Mr. Davies in his 
 sermon, entitled, " The Shadow-of the Passion on the 
 Life of Jesus." 
 
 " The glory of patience, and self-oblation, which Jesus claimed 
 as Divine, was not to be appropriated by Him exclusively. He 
 would go first, but His sheep who knew Him and heard His 
 voice were to follow Him. It was, therefore, a matter of earnest 
 and affectionate concern to the heart of Jesus that His disciples 
 should see Him, without dismay, walking upon this road, and 
 should prepare joyfully to follow Him. The passage I have read 
 for our text reminds us that, immediately after the declaration of 
 the sufferings which He was about to meet in fulfilment of His 
 Divine mission, Jesus delivered the solemn warning, ' If any man 
 wUl come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross 
 and follow me.' There was a special truth in these words for the 
 'disciples to whom they were spoken, and to them they were 
 primarily addressed. No one could become a faithful follower of 
 
MODEL SERMONS. 127 
 
 Jesus without being prepared to renounce everything, without 
 carrying his life itself in his hand. And the first desire of Jesus 
 in speaking those words was, undoubtedly, to make Peter and 
 the rest of his companions understand clearly the absolute degree 
 of the self-sacrifice which they must make in spirit, if they would 
 be thoroughly associated with the Leader ia whom they beheved. 
 He was going before them bearing His cross, submittiag before- 
 hand to the ignominy and pain which were to be openly realized ; 
 He was thus submitting, not in spite of His Divine nature, but 
 because He was the perfect Son of the righteous and loving 
 Father. If His disciples would cherish the high ambition of 
 being His friends and followers, if they would look forward to the 
 joy and the crown by which true sacrifice was to be rewarded, 
 they also must tread in the steps of the Master, they must be 
 content to serve and submit, they must gird themselves to the 
 unreserved offering of themselves to God." — pp. 250, 251. 
 
 Very different indeed is the doctrine of the sacrifice 
 and atonement of Christ preached by Cardinal Wise- 
 man. It remoTes the sacrifice of the Son of God to an 
 infinite remoteness from the duties and blessedness of 
 those whom He came to save. It is a cup of which they 
 cannot drink, a baptism with which they cannot be 
 baptized. Nay, it was offered . for this very purpose, 
 that they might not be required themselves to offer it. 
 It is the payment of a debt : the endurance of suffering 
 equivalent to that which otherwise the wicked must 
 have themselves endured. If the suffering had failed 
 to be equivalent, some portion of our sins must have 
 been unforgiven : some part of their penalty must, by 
 ourselves, have been endured. With such a theory, 
 every buffet, every lash, every, thrill of agony, every nail, 
 every thorn, every drop of blood becomes of vital im- 
 portance. We cannot estimate the quality of Christ's 
 sufferings ; it seems far more possible to determine and 
 to rejoice in their quantity. 
 
128 MODEL SEEMONS. 
 
 It is extremely easy to excite the feelings of an 
 audience by laboured and minute descriptions of the 
 physical pain which Jesus endured ; but precisely the 
 same feelings are excited by a similar description of any 
 acute pain. It is by no means necessary for this pur- 
 pose that the pain should be endured by the innocent. 
 The agonies of the impenitent thief must have been far 
 too horrible for their minute verbal description to be 
 tolerable. Even by the mere rules of the art of poetry 
 or rhetoric such horrors are excluded. 
 
 " Ne pueros coram populo Medea truoidet, 
 Aut humana palam coquat exta nefarius Atreus, 
 Aut in avem Proone vertatur, Cadnms in anguem. 
 Quodcunque ostendis miiii sic incredulus odi." * 
 
 The picture language of Cardinal Wiseman is evidently 
 intended to supply the place or deepen the effect of 
 paintings, and images, and scenic representations. All 
 these appeals to the mere bodily senses prevent, so far 
 as they are successful, our perception of the moral and 
 spiritual significance of the sufferings of our Lord. 
 And what is there in this side of Christ's sacrifice, 
 taken alone, either of life or light ? It is to us neither 
 example nor power. We are not required to submit to 
 the scoiirge and be nailed to the cross. It is not the 
 physical torment of Jesus which illumines and quickens 
 us, but His filial spirit and the perfection of His 
 brotherly love. 
 
 And what vestige of authority is there in Scripture or 
 reason for asserting that in any sense whatever, and for 
 a single moment of time, the Father was angry with the 
 Son ? In the unfathomable mystery of the incarnation, 
 
 * Horace, Ars Poetica, 185 — 188. 
 
MODEL SERMONS. 129 
 
 the Eternal Word condescended to be made in all things 
 like unto His brethren : like thena in all things which 
 do not contradict and destroy the divine family. 
 " Being found in fashion as a man," He does not 
 shrink from the lowest depths of human grief. He 
 shares the experience and conquers the temptations of 
 those " who walk in darkness and have no light." He 
 knows that utter loneliness of soul which even the 
 holiest saints have often felt, and which they regarded 
 as the inexplicable hiding of God's face. " Take thy 
 plague away from me, I am even consumed by means of 
 thy heavy hand." "My way is hid from the Lord, my 
 judgment is passed over from my God." " My God, 
 my God, look upon me; why hast thou forsaken me, 
 and art so far from my health, and from the words of 
 my complaint ? " Therefore must Jesus Christ also be 
 exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; praying with 
 strong crying and tears, " Father, if it be possible, let 
 this cup pass from me;" exclaiming in His agony, "My 
 God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " But we 
 may surely affirm, that if there was a moment when the 
 Father loved the Son better than at any other time, it 
 was when He was dying on the cross. " Therefore," 
 said Christ, " doth my Father love me, because I lay 
 down my life." And notwithstanding His desolation of 
 soul, He cried, " Father, into thy hands I commend my 
 spirit; and when he had said this he gave up the 
 ghost." To men, indeed. He might seem even as a 
 root out of a dry ground, without form or comeliness ; 
 and they might esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, 
 and afflicted. But all that Christ was suffering was but 
 the doing of God's will ; and if the Father were angry 
 at that, then vice and virtue, piety and "blasphemy, may 
 
 K 
 
130 MODEL SEEMONS. 
 
 as well change places for eyer. Never for one single 
 moment was Jesus Christ regarded by God as a sinner, 
 or punished as a sinner, or suffering as a sinner, or any- 
 thing in any sense whatever as a sinner. Between 
 Christ and sin there was an infinite distance ; and the 
 one Being in the universe who was farthest removed of 
 all from the possibility of forgetting that, was God the 
 Father. If these imputations of what is personal and 
 untransferable were possible, then every pain that Jesus 
 Christ suffered might easily have been spared ; and to 
 inflict any pain upon Him would have been the cruel 
 caprice of reckless tyranny. - If a thing can be made 
 what it is not by simply choosing to regard it as what it 
 is not, the whole human race might have been redeemed 
 by a Divine hypothesis. 
 
 But in truth, neither in Scripture nor in reason is 
 there any room whatever for such unrealities as these. 
 If a man be a bad man, no mere hypothesis, either 
 human or Divine, can possibly make him a good one. 
 If a man be a good man he will not cease to be a good 
 one, in any sense whatever, simply because he is treated 
 as a bad one. And such coarse theories of the pro- 
 pitiation and atonement of Christ as Cardinal Wise 
 man's divert our minds from the real significance of 
 Christ's sufferings, and prevent our perceiving what 
 that really is which pleases and satisfies the Almighty. 
 He is not satisfied by the sufferings of His prodigal 
 children, but by their return home and the renewal of 
 their obedience and love. " As I live, saith the Lord, 
 I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked ; " and if 
 the death of Christ had been but the death in another 
 form of the wicked, we may well believe that God would 
 have had no pleasure in that. Wliat Christ offered to 
 
MODEL SERMONS. 131 
 
 the Father was not the death of the wicked, but the life 
 of the righteous ; and the pain, in which alone that 
 oblation could be offered, was the agony of love and 
 goodness in the midst of sin and hatred, and assuredly 
 not the torture inflicted by an inexorable Deity. "With- 
 out the assumption of an imputation of our guilt, and in 
 perfect harmony with the unbroken consciousness of 
 personal separation from our sins, the Son of God, 
 bearing us and our sins on His heart before the Father, 
 must needs respond to the Father's judgment on our 
 sins with that confession of their evil and of the 
 righteousness of the wrath of God against them, and 
 holy sorrow because of them, which were due — due in 
 the truth of things, due on our behalf though we could 
 not render it, due from Him as in our nature and our 
 true brother — what he must needs feel in Himself 
 because of the holiness and love which were in Him — 
 what He .must needs utter to the Father in expiation of 
 our sins when He would make intercession for us." * 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that either Cardinal 
 Wiseman, or those who accept the same theories of 
 atonement and propitiation as his, are in the least 
 degree willing to accept all the logical consequences 
 which follow from those theories. I have not the 
 smallest doubt that the passage quoted a few paragraphs 
 back from Cardinal Wiseman's sermon, " On the 
 Character and Sufferings of Christ in His Passion," is 
 both unscriptural and blasphemous ; but I am very far 
 indeed from thinking that Cardinal. Wiseman is a blas- 
 phemer. He does not really mean what he says, though 
 he thinks that he does ; he does not think, though he 
 
 * Campbell, " On the Nature of the Atonement." — pp. 137, 138. 
 
 E 2 
 
132 MODEL SERMONS. 
 
 says so, that Jesus Christ was in any sense guilty of the 
 denial of Peter, or the treachery of Judas, or the cruelty 
 of those who nailed Him to the cross. He does not 
 really believe that moral qualities are transferable ; for, 
 indeed, the greatest part of his practical teaching is 
 founded upon the fact of personal responsibility, and 
 that God will judge every man according to his works. 
 He is quite as much in earnest when he speaks of the 
 boundless grace of God, and the perfect and unalterable 
 sympathy between the Father and the Son, as he is 
 when he says that God " sees before Him in Jesus 
 Christ a culprit upon whose head lie all the iniquities of 
 men ; " and that " each of the ingredients, every particle 
 of this mass of turpitude, excites God's abhorrence in an 
 inconceivable degree." We cannot believe, at the same 
 time, in God's perfect satisfaction with the Son and His 
 abhorrence of Him, in the spotless holiness and im- 
 measurable turpitude of Jesus; and, when these two 
 contradictions are put together in the same sentence, or 
 in the same paragraph, we may indeed read the words, 
 but they convey to us no meaning whatever. That, in 
 fact, is precisely what is meant when we are told that 
 these contradictions are a mystery which the human 
 intellect is not permitted to meddle with. That truth 
 which is present most constantly to the mind of Cardinal 
 Wiseman, as it is to the mind of every Christian teacher, 
 is the love of God, His readiness to forgive sinners, 
 His perpetual operation in nature and in the human 
 spirit for the regeneration of the evil, His union with 
 the Son, His infinite satisfaction with Jesus Christ, and 
 His revelation in Him of His own righteousness and 
 love. Everything that is opposed to this truth Cardinal 
 Wiseman holds in abeyance, utters in language incon- 
 
MODEL SERMONS. 133 
 
 sistent and unintelligible, or even self-contradictory, and 
 only sometimes half believes. 
 
 But while the critic is bound to separate the man from 
 his doctrines, it is his plain duty, and in fact one of the 
 most important parts of his work, to expose, and, if 
 possible, correct all errors of doctrine, whoever may hold 
 them. To represent the Father as, in any sense, angry 
 with the Son ; to represent Christ as in any sense 
 whatever a sinner ; to teach that virtue and vice, sin and 
 righteousness, are transferable qualities ; this seems to 
 me utterly unwarranted by Scripture, wholly irrational, 
 and extremely dangerous. No religion ever has been 
 built upon such doctrine ; and the only religion which 
 could be built upon it would fill both heaven and earth 
 with confusion and anarchy. 
 
 There is very much, therefore, in Cardinal Wiseman's 
 sermons that I neither believe nor admire ; but on the 
 other hand, their style, though far too gorgeous, is often 
 exceedingly beautiful after its kind. He has lived far 
 too long in England, and occupied far too conspicuous a 
 position among us, to be unaffected by that spirit of 
 Protestantism which is dominant in our country. Again 
 and again he solemnly warns his hearers that they should 
 distrust their own reason, and remember that the 
 mysteries of God are far too vast for human comprehen- 
 sion. But notwithstanding these warnings, he himself 
 condescends to explain, to argue, to oifer proof, to answer 
 objections. He must do his best even to commend in- 
 fallibility to our reason ; and he has learned that human 
 spirits must be won and persuaded, and that the sub- 
 mission which is not of the will is worthless. Moreover, 
 it cannot be denied that there is this manliness in his 
 sermons. He is perfectly well aware that, in the judg- 
 
34 MODEL SEBMONS. 
 
 ment of Protestants, many Catholic dogmas are so 
 extremely ridiculous as not even to be worthy of refuta- 
 tion. The majority of English people are no more likely 
 to trouble themselves with transubstantiation and the 
 immaculate conception of the Virgin, than with witch- 
 craft or alchemy, or the old systems of astronomy. 
 Insane people occasionally wander about the country, 
 even in our own days, who imagine that they are able to 
 demonstrate that the earth is a flat surface and the centre 
 of the whole universe ; but nobody notices them ; their 
 arguments remain unanswered, not because they are un- 
 answerable, but because they are contemptible. Cardinal 
 Wiseman knows perfectly well that the most prominent 
 dogmas of his own Church are treated in exactly the 
 same way. But he, in effect, says to his hearers, it is at 
 once dishonest and useless to hold the doctrines of your 
 Church in a cowardly, half-hearted way ; the glories of 
 St. Mary, the divine mystery of the holy Eucharist, the 
 infallibility of the Church, are to be affirmed all the more 
 emphatically where men disbelieve and deride them. 
 Be true to your professions and beliefs ; if you are true 
 to them, if you live and work as good Catholics should, 
 your own consciences will be more clear, your persecutors 
 will be abashed and confounded ; the true wisdom will 
 be justified of her children ; and men will begin to per- 
 ceive that God has built His Church upon a rock, 
 against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. This 
 is very good advice for anybody ; for real life is that sure 
 test by which every form of falsehood must in the end 
 be detected. 
 
 It is very instructive to compare the sermons of 
 Cardinal Wiseman with sermons on the same or kindred 
 subjects in the other volumes whose titles are at the 
 
MODEL SEEMONS. 135 
 
 head of this essay, especially those of the Eev. Llewelyn 
 Davies. It is very instructive, for instance, to compare 
 Cardinal Wiseman's sermon on " The Incarnation and 
 Birth of Jesus Christ," with Mr. Davies's on " The 
 Power of the Divine Infancy;" the sermon on "Our 
 Saviour in the Temple," with that entitled " Jesus in the 
 midst of the Doctors ;" " The Two Great Mysteries of 
 Love," with " Christ the Bread of Life ; " the Cardinal's 
 sermons (viii. and xi.). On the Passion, with Mr. 
 Davies's (xvi.) ; the sermon on the Kingdom of Christ, 
 with those of Mr. Davies (ii., iii., iv.) on the same 
 subject. Good as Cardinal Wiseman's sermons are, Mr. 
 Davies's are, both in matter and style, immeasurably 
 better. In them, also, we find the distinction between 
 faith and reason ; but the two are never separated, never 
 opposed, as if contrary the one to the other. It is im- 
 possible, indeed,, minutely to examirie either of the three 
 volumes by Mr. Davies, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Maclaren. 
 Each of them desei-ves a separate notice, and will repay 
 a careful and devout perusal. They have their place, 
 however, in this essay, as furnishing, by actual illustra- 
 tion, such hints of the best modes of preaching, and the 
 vocation of the preacher, as may surely be neither with- 
 out interest nor without use. It is not the critic, but 
 only good preachers, who can teach other people to 
 preach ; it is too often the far more unpleasant and in- 
 vidious of&ce of the critic simply to indicate when the 
 preacher's work has been iU done ; and he represents, 
 in some manner, the law by which is the knowledge of 
 sin, while he is wholly unable to iihpart that genius 
 from whose operations all the laws and canons of 
 criticism must be deduced. Even the critic himself can 
 imderstand no author for whom he is utterly without 
 
136 MODEL SERMONS. 
 
 reverence, and he is under immeasurably deeper obliga- 
 tion to any work of genius than it can possibly be to him. 
 The remarks, then, that follow must be regarded as an 
 attempt to indicate what the best models have deter- 
 mined to be the noblest forms and the true aim of 
 preaching. Probably many tons' weight of sermons are 
 published evei^ week and thickly scattered over the 
 country, and a minute examination of a few hundred 
 numbers of the various Penny Pulpits would scarcely fail 
 to be very instructive. "We should then understand 
 better than we do now whence arise those dense fogs of 
 ignorance in which unquestionably so many good people 
 are miserably groping about. We should be introduced 
 into the secret of the inaccurate and intolerant dogmatism 
 which is at one moment so defiant, and at the next so 
 panic-stricken, so ambitious and so grovelling, so super- 
 stitious and so profane. We should understand how it 
 is that religion is doing more to disturb the peace of 
 English society than almost all other causes put together. 
 We should learn how it comes to pass that so many 
 hundreds, nay, thousands of people, are incapable of 
 perceiving any kind of godliness apart from the continual 
 use of conventional phrases ; or any foundation of piety, 
 excepting a written book, which, for thousands of years 
 after man was created, had no existence. It is quite un- 
 necessary to deny that these sermons have done, or are 
 doing, in their preached or printed shape, some sort 
 of good ; but they are doing the good indirectly, and 
 at the cost of enormous mischief. They are strengthen- 
 ing men's belief of one set of truths which, taken 
 alone, are robbed of by far the largest portion of 
 their significance and value ; but they are "strengthen- 
 ing that belief too often at the cost of rendering men 
 
MODEL SERMONS. 137 
 
 utterly incapable of the noblest intellectual and spiritual 
 achievements. They urge men to build their faith 
 upon the foundation of the Scriptures as an in- 
 fallible and authoritative declaration of God's will ; but 
 they seem to teach that it is unnecessary, and even un- 
 lawful, to ask for any authority for accepting the 
 Scriptures themselves. In order that men's souls may 
 be saved, they seem willing to sacrifice so much of man's 
 nature, and faculty, and development, that men have 
 scarcely anything left worth saving. And if a critic be 
 complained of, or even abused, for passing so unfavour- 
 able, and what may seem so bitter, a judgment on that 
 vast mass of teaching which is filling every week a larger 
 and larger place in the periodical literature of England, 
 he may fairly answer — " It is not I who condemn this 
 preaching ; it is not I who refuse to admit that twaddle 
 and ignorance, bad jokes, and coarse invective, and bully- 
 ing intolerance, and worn-out platitudes, are necessary 
 to the salvation of souls. I should not know what good 
 sermons are unless I had heard or read them. It is not 
 I who complain of bad sermons ; it is tha good sermons 
 that complain of them. I can only compare the one 
 with the other ; I can only say, these contain their own 
 evidence of being what sermons should be ; and they, 
 and not the critic, condemn all sermons that radically 
 and essentially difl'er from themselves." 
 
 Therefore it is, that in the remarks that follow I shall 
 in no way presume to treat the sermons of such preachers 
 as Mr. Davies, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Maclaren, as if they 
 were schoolboys' exercises, and I the pedagogue com- 
 petent to correct them. With the utmost respect and 
 gratitude I am only too thankful to have such models 
 before me for the guidance of my judgment. I may 
 
138 MODEL SERMONS. 
 
 remark, to begin with, the entire absence from all these 
 sermons of that affectation of being something or other, 
 one scarcely knows what, which is indicated by the very 
 constant use, by inferior preachers, of we, instead of I. 
 No doubt this is generally an unmeaning habit or a silly 
 conventionalism ; but the first man who rebelled against 
 it must have had some good reason for departing from 
 a custom which is deemed by many essential to the 
 modesty of the pulpit. If a Eoman Catholic were to say 
 we in his sermons instead of I, he might be supposed to 
 mean something of this sort — " I am, to you who listen 
 to me, not a weak, erring mortal like yourselves ; I do 
 not tell you what merely seems true to me, which you 
 are at liberty to dispute and to deny ; I stand before you 
 as the representative of the Infallible Church, in which 
 the Holy Ghost is dwelling evermore ; it is not I speak- 
 ing to you, but I tell you what seems good to the Holy 
 Ghost and to the holy Catholic Church." Such a use 
 as this of we, instead of I, would be, at least, intelligible. 
 So again, when a preacher announces his text, and 
 directs the attention of his congregation to what he be- 
 lieves to be its meaning, there ought to be such com- 
 munion of thought and reflection, preacher and hearers 
 both at the same time earnestly seeking for truth, with 
 the firm belief that truth is the common heritage of all 
 mankind, that the plural, we, may often be required. 
 But nobody can read those wondrous three-headed com- 
 positions called sermons, which the Penny Pulpit dis- 
 tributes by tons at a time over the whole country, without 
 perceiving that the we is generally a silly affectation of 
 clerical dignity. 
 
 During that long and deepening darkness which began 
 to be dissipated at the Eeformation, preaching became 
 
MODEL SEEMONS. 139 
 
 more and more neglected. The sacraments of the 
 Church were degraded into magical incantations. A few 
 drops of water, a few crumbs of bread, a few smears of 
 oil, were the potent instruments by which human spirits 
 were regenerated, and nourished, and introduced into 
 heavenly blessedness. Men had almost forgotten, when 
 they came together into God's house, whose house it 
 was, and why they had come thither. The clergy, who 
 had been in better days the leaders of human progress 
 and the depositories of learning, began to find their 
 learning useless ; and that to guide reluctant and 
 ignorant followers was a painful and profitless business. 
 So by degrees priests and people acting and reacting on 
 each other, both were alike enveloped in a deep gloom of 
 ignorance and idleness, in which nothing good or 
 .beautiful could live. When, therefore, the English 
 nation began to grow weary of a tyranny which could not 
 even justify itself by a superior ability to govern ; when, 
 in a wondrous awakening of intellectual life, they began 
 to despise the teachers who had nothing to teach, and 
 who tried to steal the key of knowledge from all who 
 wished to learn ; it was discovered that mummery and 
 magic had so entirely usurped the place of truth and life, 
 that priests could be found by scores who did not even 
 know the meaning of the words they were accustomed to 
 mutter in their solemn religious ceremonies. All was 
 jargon and confusion together; the blind leading the 
 blind. And then, once for all, it was swiftly determined 
 that this darkness and disgrace should come to an end. 
 Men demanded to be taught, to know the meaning of 
 what they did. How could the authorized leaders respond 
 to such a call ? How could they teach what they did 
 not know ? So there arose a new race of instructors ; 
 
140 MODEL SERMONS. 
 
 and statesmen and preachers accomplislied the Refor- 
 mation. 
 
 Again and again, since the Reformation, the Church 
 has relapsed, not into Popery but formalism ; preferring 
 the letter that killeth to the spirit that giveth lif*. 
 Sacred ceremonies have been emptied of their meaning, 
 have become a dull profitless routine ; and, again and 
 again, preachers, like the old prophets, have risen up to 
 call men back from the form to the substance, from 
 baptism to regeneration, from the Eucharist to the 
 living bread that came down from heaven — in order that 
 having regained the thing signified, the signs might be 
 no longer a curse to them, but become a blessing. And 
 now, in our own day, when the area of knowledge has 
 increased, so that almost every Englishman- may find a 
 place within it ; when the example of America — mighty_ 
 for good, and scarcely less mighty for evil — has almost 
 changed liberty into anarchy, and elevated the foolish 
 many above the few wise ; when we seem almost entering 
 upon that period of our history which is already written 
 for us in the brilliance, the commerce, the refinement, 
 the corruption, the liberty, the anarchy, the despotism, 
 the ruin of the Athenian democracy ; when the power of 
 speech is becoming next to money the greatest power 
 among us, and even money itself can be obtained almost 
 as easily by impudent self-assertion and mendacious 
 puffery as by hard and steady work : — in these days the 
 preacher may have a power that no other age could have 
 given him, and must wrestle with temptations to forget 
 his true vocation and his real message that no other age 
 could know. He will be tempted to be plausible rather 
 than true, to seek for popularity instead of bearing the 
 burden of the Lord, to have ever present to him the 
 
MODEL SEEMONS. 141 
 
 consciousness that every well-liked sermon will gain 
 votes in his favour, and that every ill-liked sermon will 
 lose them. He will be sorely tempted to subject even 
 truth and religion to the test of the ballot-box. 
 
 Therefore, every faithful preacher must avail himself 
 of every means, how simple soever they may seem, oi 
 impressing upon his hearers the fact that there are 
 certain actual realities and unalterable laws to which all 
 mankind are subject, whatever they may choose or vote, 
 He will, in effect, say to his hearers: "You come to 
 God's house, not to listen to me, but to worship youi 
 Father who is in heaven. The prayers we offer are 
 common prayers — prayers for all of us, as members 
 of the divine family. The lessons I read to you are 
 taken from the Holy Scriptures. The sacraments are 
 the signs of that divine life which there is for all of us 
 in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ whom God has 
 sent. During our worship, I shall try to explain to 
 you some part of God's Word, that the lessons of Scrip- 
 ture may come to you not in word only but in power. 
 But I have no infallible teaching for you — which is at 
 once to settle all your doubts, and relieve you from the 
 responsibility of thought and judgment. I cannot even 
 pretend that, for what I say, I have the authority of the 
 whole Church of God. You may be sure that I would 
 not teach you what I do not believe to be true, but what 
 I say to you you must receive with caution and with 
 freedom ; and the best result that I can hope for from 
 my teaching is this, that it may lead you to that ' true 
 Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the 
 world,' to that Holy Ghost who has promised to 'lead us 
 all into the whole truth.' " 
 
 Again, the sermons of Mr. Davies, and Mr. Brown, 
 
142 MODEL SEKMONS. 
 
 and Mr. Maclaren are entirely free from all those oddities 
 which not even the most brilliant wit can redeem from 
 profanity. There are no sermons in these volumes from 
 the text, "Who's dat knocking at dedoor?" — the text 
 selected by a popular minister in Manchester, wherewith 
 to edify as many thousands of human beings as the Free 
 Trade Hall in that city could hold. "French Plays," says 
 the author of The Sentimental Journey, " are absolutely 
 fine ; and whenever I have a more brilliant affair upon 
 my hands than common, as they suit a preacher just aa 
 well as a hero, I generally make my sermon out of 'em, 
 and for the text, ' Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia 
 and Pamphylia,' is as good as any one in the Bible." 
 This, indeed, seems to be the principle upon which a very 
 large number of preachers have selected their texts ; 
 and it is an old complaint against them, that they do 
 not expound the Bible but play with it. There is a 
 very amusing little book to be picked up occasionally at 
 old book-stalls, " The Ground and Occasions of the 
 Contempt of the Clergy and Eeligion enquired into ; in 
 a Letter written to E. L. London: printed by W. 
 Godbid, for N. Brooke, at the Angel, in CornhiU, 1670." 
 The book is every way worth reading, and is attributed 
 to a vsriter of considerable eminence. He gives many 
 examples of the absurd, not to say profane use, that the 
 preachers of his time used to make of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures ; and, in fact, the book is as droll a little book as 
 a book can be, with much more fun in it than Punch, and 
 Fun, and The Owl, and The Porcupine all put together. 
 
 " For a short text," he says, " that certainly was the greatest 
 break that ever was, which was occasioned from those words of St. 
 Luke, xxiii. 28, ' "Weep not for me, weep for yourselves.' It is a 
 plain case. Sir, here's but eight words ; and the business was so 
 
MODEL SERMONS. 143 
 
 cunningly ordered, that there sprang out eight parts. ' Here 
 are,' says the Doctor, ' eight words, and eight parts. 1. Weep 
 not; 2. But weep; 3. Weep not, but weep; 4. Weep for me; 
 5. For yourselves; 6. For me for yourselves; 7. Weep not for 
 me; 8. But weep for yourselves.' That is to say; north, north 
 and by east, north north-east, north-east and by north, north-east, 
 north-east and by east, east north-east, east and by north, east. 
 Now it seems not very easie to determine, which has obliged the 
 world most, he that found out the compass, or he that divided the 
 forementioned text ; but I suppose the cracks will go generally 
 upon the Doctor's side ; by reason what he did was done by 
 undoubted art, and absolute industry ; but as for the other, the 
 common report is, that it was found out by mere foolish fortune. 
 Well, let it go how it will, questionless they wiU be both famous 
 in their way, and honourably mentioned to posterity." " But it 
 is high time. Sir," he says, after giving many ludicrous examples 
 of preposterous misuse of Scripture, to "make an end of this 
 preaching, lest you be as much tired with the repetition of it, as 
 the people were little benefited when they heard it. I shaR only 
 remind you, Sir, of one thing more, and that is the ridiculous, 
 senseless, and unintended use, which many of them make of 
 concordances. I shall give you but one instance of it, although 
 I could furnish you with an hundred printed ones. The text. 
 Sir, is this. Gal. vi. IS, ' For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision 
 nor unoircumcision availeth anything, but a new creature.' Now 
 all the world know the meaning of this to be, that let a man be of 
 what nation he will, Jew or Gentile, if he amends his life and 
 walks according to the Gospel, he shall be accepted with God. 
 But this is not the way that pleases them. They must bring into 
 the sermon, to no purpose at aU, a vast heap of places of Scripture 
 (which the concordance will furnish them with) where the word 
 new is mentioned. And the new observation must be, that God 
 is for new things ; God is for a new creature, St. John, xix. 41 ; 
 ' Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden, 
 and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man 
 yet laid ; there laid they Jesus.' And again, St. Mark, xvi. 17, 
 Christ tells His disciples, they that are true believers shall cast 
 out devils, and speak with new tongues ; and likewise the prophet 
 teaches us, Isaiah xlii. 10, ' Sing unto the Lord a new song, and 
 his praise unto the end of the earth.' Whence it is plain that 
 Christ is not for old things ; He is not for an old sepulchre ; Hp 
 
144 MODEL SERMONS. 
 
 is not for old tongues ; He is not for an old song ; He is not for 
 the old creature ; Christ is for the new creature, circumcision and 
 imcircumcision availeth nothing, hut the new creature. And 
 what do we read concerning Samson, Judges xv. 15 ; is it not that 
 he slew a thousand of the Philistines with one new jaw-bone? 
 An old one might have killed its tens, its twenties, its hundreds ; 
 but it must be a new jaw-bone that is able to kill a thousand. 
 God is for the new creatui-e. 
 
 " But may not some say, Is God altogether for new things ? 
 How comes it about, then, that the prophet says, Isaiah i. 13, 14 ; 
 ' Bring no more vain oblations, etc. Your new moons, and your 
 appointed feasts, my soul hateth?' And again, what means that, 
 Deut. xxxii. 17 — 19; 'They sacrificed unto devils, and to new 
 gods, whom they knew not ; to new gods that came newly up ; 
 and when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them'? To which 
 I answer, that God indeed is not for new moons, nor for new gods ; 
 but excepting moons and gods, He is for new things. God is for 
 the new creature. 
 
 " It is possible, Sir, that somebody besides yourself may be so 
 vain as to read this letter, and they may perhaps tell you, that 
 there be no such siUy and useless people as I have described ; 
 and if there be, not above two or three in a county ; or should 
 there be more, it is no such complaining matter, seeing that the 
 same happens in other professions, in law and physick ; in both 
 which there be many a contemptible creature. Such, therefore, 
 as these may be pleased to know, that if there had been need I 
 could have told them either the book, and very page, almost of 
 all that has been spoken about preaching, or else the when and 
 where, and the person that preached it." 
 
 This last is avery judicious remark. If anybody chooses 
 to offer an unfavourable criticism of either preaching or 
 practices with which he is perfectly familiar; if he 
 speaks out of the mere honesty of his soul, and his 
 earnest desire that such evils as he may have noticed in 
 word or deed may be corrected; there is always some- 
 body who knows nothing whatever about him, who is 
 not one jot or tittle more honest or better informed than 
 himself, who forthwith replies to all his suggestions and 
 
MODEL SERMONS. 145 
 
 expostulations that lie is a malignant liar, a disappointed . 
 man, a man of soured and bitter temper. I will venture, 
 nevertheless, to affirm that the Penny Pulpit, and much 
 more, the pulpit that is not worth offering for sale 
 at the price of one penny, would still furnish examples 
 of grotesque absurdity as astonishing as those which are 
 found in the little book from which the above extracts 
 were taken. No one will deny the cleverness, for 
 instance, of the Eev. C. H. Spurgeon ; eveiybody who 
 knows him asserts that he is a witty, jovial man, 
 thoroughly generous and unconventional, with a very 
 becoming scorn of humbug, even though it should be 
 mistaken for religion. And yet very few will deny that 
 many of his earlier sermons were utterly indecent, and 
 that his jokes and oddities could scarcely, by any well- 
 regulated mind, be distinguished from profanity. The 
 sermons, again, of the Eev. A. Mursell, of Manchester, 
 may ' possibly have saved a few souls ; but only at the 
 enormous risk of turning the church into a theatre and 
 the Gospel into a farce. It is really not desirable to 
 admit Harlequin and Pantaloon, and Columbine and 
 Clown, to holy orders ; and is it, after all, the truth or 
 the joke that fastens itself most securely on the thought 
 and memory of the hearer ? " ' It is damned hot : ' 
 these are the words that I heard as I was entering the 
 sanctuary this morning. Let me assure you, my profane 
 hearer, that you will find hell a great deal hotter ! " 
 After this fashion, it is reported, a popular London 
 minister began his sermon one Sunday morning. This 
 anecdote, probably, like almost all anecdotes, is a lie ; 
 but it is a symbolical lie, — a coarse, vulgar, exaggerated 
 description of what is very often said in the sermons of 
 " Punch in the Pulpit." Is it really necessary to adopt 
 
146 MODEL SERMONS. 
 
 this style of exhortation ? If it attracts attention, it 
 is still necessary to enquire to what the attention is 
 attracted. I have no hesitation in saying that the 
 attention is attracted to the joke, and not to the religious 
 truth introduced by it ; and this pious buffoonery is a 
 vei-y ignorant insult to the working classes. A Sunday 
 spent in the parks or on the London-fields would very 
 soon convince anybody, who has ears to hear, that there 
 are teachers busily at work among the working classes 
 who are in grim earnest, and who consider all these 
 pulpit witticisms, beneath contempt. There are many 
 divines who seem very little aware that their arguments 
 have been long ago anticipated and answered, not to 
 say demolished, by reasoners in fustian jackets, and 
 often with deplorably dirty faces and linen, — Jews, 
 Catholics, Atheists, Secularists, people of all beliefs and 
 of no belief at all, who really do want to know what 
 religious teachers mean, and how they can prove the 
 propositions which they so confidently affirm. That 
 public discussions should interrupt the worship of a 
 Christian congregation is entirely insufferable, and would 
 be an unmitigated evil ; but no clergyman should ever 
 permit himself to be entrenched within the safe enclosure 
 of the " sacred desk," without having first, in his own 
 mind, most carefully discussed and opposed his own 
 theories and propositions. It is impossible, as it would 
 be unwise, for a preacher to exhibit in every discourse 
 all the reasons that have combined to lead him to the 
 conclusions at which he has arrived ; but he ought never 
 to make a single assertion which he does not know that 
 he is thoroughly prepared to verify. Jokes that waver 
 between the Bible and the beer-shop are by no means 
 the spiritual aliment which the intelligent poor are 
 
MODEL SEEMONS. 147 
 
 willing to live upon. They cannot speak their mind in 
 church or chapel ; but everybody who mixes with them 
 where they can speak their mind understands that what 
 they utterly loathe and despise is every sort of jargon, 
 big words, mere pompous shibboleths, of which they do 
 not know the meaning. The large congregations that 
 crowd the tabernacles and halls of "Reverend" jesters 
 are made up of a very large proportion of lazy people, 
 who have a notion that the chief duty of a Christian 
 man is to be tickled, or " fed," or " comforted," or any- 
 thing, in short, except working for the good of his 
 fellow-creatures and the glory of God. If what people 
 say about the providence of God be not hypocritical 
 nonsense from beginning to end, we may surely believe 
 that the providence of God puts a man in some particular 
 district in order that, for some time at least, he should 
 stop there. To put this matter in the coarsest form, he 
 gets his living there. Suppose he is a shop-keeper in 
 Bethnal-green : the locality is, undoubtedly, far from 
 aristocratic ; the parish authorities have the reputation 
 of being, in matters of common humanity, somewhat 
 below the level of half-naked savages. But still the 
 Bethnal-green people are the customers who patronise 
 his shop, and without whose patronage he could not live 
 at all. Surely, if he is wiser than they are, he is, as 
 St. Paul would' say, " their debtor." Undoubtedly, a 
 fight with the ignorance and brutality, the disease and 
 poverty, of Bethnal-green is not a cheerful occupation, 
 but manifestly that battle must be fought by somebody 
 or other ; and the man who is making his money out of 
 Bethnal-green, and who leaves the cure of its evils and 
 the multiplication of its comforts to perfect strangers, is 
 a very mean and shabby person. If Bethnal-green is in 
 
 l2 
 
148 MODEL SERMONS. 
 
 want of churches and chapels, priests and preachers and 
 schoolmasters, the people who are bound, in the sight 
 of God, to furnish these things are the inhabitants of 
 Bethnal-green itself, and especially those who are rich 
 and prosperous. Any arrangement which should remove 
 the rich and prosperous from all genuine human contact 
 with their more unfortunate and unsuccessful neighbours 
 would be a very wicked and ungodly arrangement. 
 
 And this leads me to notice a class of apologies, 
 frequently offered, for some of the most ominous pulpit 
 eccentricities which, during the last few years, have been 
 thrusting themselves into prominence. A godly man is 
 astonished and appalled by the laziness and indifference 
 and heartlessness of some Christian congregation ; there- 
 upon, in a way, perhaps, justifiably irregular, he does 
 his best to wake them out of that sleep which may so 
 easily become death. Hymns, prayers, fieiy exhortations, 
 personal appeals, vehement gesticulations, "penitent 
 forms," all manner of revival appliances, are possibly, to 
 begin with, not a worse evil than spiritual deadness. A 
 great effect is produced ; the sleeping congregation is 
 roused into activity, and he who woke them out of their 
 indifference and sloth becomes notorious as a revivalist. 
 If there be any work at all, which I very much doubt, for 
 a professional revivalist to do, it can surely be no other 
 than this : — to awake those who too long and too heavily 
 are sleeping ; it can, surely, never be the work of any 
 one who is not insane to irritate those who are awake 
 already into an inflammatory and feverish excitement. 
 A revivalist is, if we may so speak, a tonic, or a stimu- 
 lant, or a counter-irritant ; but most unquestionably he 
 is not food and rest. His very existence implies disease. 
 If he can cure his patients, so much the better ; and the 
 
MODEL SEEMONS. 149 
 
 sooner he can cure them the better. And then, with a 
 joyous regret, let us courteously bid him good-bye, and 
 treat him as we do apothecaries and medicine bottles. 
 But this is far from the method that is often recom- 
 mended by the religious world. Build, they say, for our 
 revivalist a huge hall or tabernacle that shall hold 
 thousands of liuman beings ; let no part of our spiritual 
 person be ever free from the most irritating of blisters. 
 Let us, in our most devout and reverent moods, when we 
 are most conscious of doing our best to obey God and 
 help one another, be appealed to as wretched sinners, 
 slothful and unprofitable servants, and teased and 
 worried, and warned and threatened, as if the grace of 
 God had done nothing for lis, and there were no such 
 thing in the world as regeneration and holiness. The 
 revivalist, we are told, will suit a certain class ; let him 
 have a huge edifice in which to preach, and let him Ja^ve 
 this certain class to preach to. To which I answer,; JLut 
 in every respect undesirable, a total mistake, an unt^ff^ 
 gated evil, that the different classes of religious people 
 should be separated from one another. If all the zealous 
 Christians in the world were to be put together, there 
 would be a vast development of zeal without discretion, 
 that would reduce all Christian order to chaos. If all 
 the discreet Christians in the world were put together, 
 there would be so many examinations and re-examina- 
 tions, resolutions and amendments, committees and sub- 
 committees, reports and adjournments, and then, for 
 sq.fety's sake, the whole long business done over again, 
 that, in fact, nothing would ever be thoroughly done at 
 all. Who would care to join a Church, evei-y member 
 of which was nothing but a clever logician ; or a Church 
 of which every member was an impassioned enthusiast ? 
 
150 MODEL SBEMONS. 
 
 The major premises of the logician must be gathered 
 from actual experience and life. The emotions have as 
 real and important a place in human nature as the in- 
 tellect or conscience. The better part of valour is not 
 always discretion, nor is mere rashness courage. Enthu- 
 siastic people are benefited by the cautious, and the 
 cautious by the eager — an arrangement by which 
 Christian people could be classed together according to 
 their prominent characteristics would simply produce 
 monsters. 
 
 The sermons in the volumes whose titles are at the 
 head of this essay are a complete and most admirable 
 protest against this tendency ; which, in truth, is be- 
 coming exceedingly dangerous among us. The sermons 
 of Mr. Davies, for instance, would unquestionably give 
 great pleasure to a congregation of intelligent, well- 
 educated Christian people ; but they are perfectly free 
 from jargon, perfectly intelligible to every sensible 
 Englishman, even if he had never been to school in his 
 life ; and this is the sure proof, or one of the sure proofs, 
 that they are not out of harmony with the Gospel of the 
 common salvation. For the Gospel is not meant for 
 poor people only, nor for rich people only, but for all 
 sorts and conditions of men ; it'will humble the pride of 
 the haughty, and teach the mean-spirited and despond- 
 ing a noble self-respect. 
 
 The sermons of Cardinal Wiseman are too much of 
 the nature of a continual appeal to the feelings, and we 
 are very often told that the preaching that has this for 
 its object is the most effective of all preaching. I 
 entirely disbelieve it. The emotions which are not the 
 result of knowledge and thought are scarcely better than 
 the wrigglings of a wounded worm. It is the inalienable 
 
MODEL SEBMONS. 151 
 
 distinction of a human being that it is possible for him 
 to know why he acts, speaks, or feels ; and a very large 
 part of human education has for its chief object to enable 
 us to control our emotions. 
 
 We all owe our sincerest thanks to such preachers as 
 teach us, not by cold critical descriptions but by their 
 own preaching, what the vocation of the preacher really 
 is. Mr. Davies, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Maclaren expound 
 Scriptuie instead of playing with it. They come to the 
 Bible as learners, not as patrons. They condescend to 
 no mean devices for entrapping the attention of reluctant 
 hearers. They are quite sure that he who persuades 
 them to pander to bad taste and ignorance, to think more 
 of popularity than truth, more of reputation and power 
 than of the mysteries of God's love, is not God, but the 
 evil spirit who offered to Jesus all the kingdoms of the 
 world and all their glory — " if thou wilt bow down and 
 worship me." 
 
ON EITUALISM.* 
 
 Very few people will now deny that a great change, 
 amounting almost to a revolution, has, during the last 
 quarter of a century, been passing over the Established 
 Church, I do not mean that the first symptoms, much 
 less the causes of this revolution, are of no older date ; 
 but at any rate for five and twenty years, the attention, 
 first of the thinking few, and at last of the unthinking 
 many, has been directed to this fact — that there is a 
 large and increasing party in the Established Church, 
 wishing and trying, and at last to a very dangerous 
 extent succeeding in the attempt, to undo the Eeforma- 
 tion. The most conspicuous symptom of the existence 
 and success of this party is to be found in an unmis- 
 takeable alteration in the rites and ceremonies of the 
 Church of England. Very young men can remember 
 the time when it was alniost dangerous for any clergy- . 
 man, outside a cathedral, to preach a sermon in a 
 surplice. Now, there are very many churches, not only 
 in large cities but even in quiet country parishes, in 
 which an ordinary Protestant would find it impossible to 
 
 * " The Jom-nal of Sacred Literature," April, 1867. 
 
154 ON EITtJAlilSM. 
 
 determine from the services themselves, whether he had 
 found his way into a Eoman or an Anglican church. 
 The Holy Roman tongue is indeed still forbidden, and 
 an English clergyman is still compelled to make use of 
 the English language in those Common Prayers which 
 are meant for English men and women.* But a priest 
 who is forbidden to make use of an unknown tongue in 
 divine service, may so effectually render himself inarticu- 
 late, that it becomes absolutely of no importance what- 
 ever what language he may be speaking. In what are 
 called "high" churches no stranger, no educated 
 Englishman, who was not already perfectly familiar with 
 the Book of Common Prayer, would be able so much as 
 to guess what words the clergymen were using. 
 
 Moreover these "high" churches are for the most 
 part crowded with worshippers. Not only do idle young 
 women, who may naturally enough be attracted by gay 
 dresses, even though worn only by female men, waste 
 their leisure in foolish superstitions; but grown-up 
 men, heads of families, and heads of houses of business, 
 clerks in offices, lawyers, volunteers, all kinds of people, 
 gather together in great crowds to take their part in the 
 new idolatry which some three hundred years ago was 
 cast away as obsolete. The Anglo- Catholics are not 
 afraid even to direct special attention to the fact, that 
 their converts are drawn almost equally from both sexes. 
 •Following apparently in this matter, as in many others, 
 the Eubric of the first of the prayer-books of King 
 Edward VI., they require communicants — and indeed 
 the whole congregation is expected to "assist" at the 
 Communion — "to tarry, the men on the one side, and 
 
 * The private prayers at the Anglican " Mass " are in Latin. 
 
ON RITUALISM. 155 
 
 the women on the other side." It must be confessed — 
 and it is no mean praise — that these Anglo-Catholics 
 have brought hundreds and thousands of young men 
 and women to care for what they believe to be the 
 worship of Almighty. God, who but for them would 
 probably have cared for nothing but flirtation and pipes. 
 Altar cloths and vestments, incense and vases of flowers, 
 are far enough from religion ; but they are at any rate 
 less dangerous and less disgusting than slander or 
 spittoons. 
 
 The change, however, that has come over the English 
 Church is of the very gravest importance — indeed, it is 
 quite impossible to over-estimate its importance. It 
 really amounts to something like this, — an affirmative 
 reply to the question soberly asked, not in mockei-y but 
 with the expectation of a sensible answer, — Is England 
 to become like Spain ? Is the State to become subor- 
 dinate to the Church ? Are priests to have more power 
 over married women than their own husbands, and over 
 children than their own parents ? Is healthy British 
 morality to be changed for the casuistry of the Confes- 
 sional ? Is that Hberty " to know, to utter, and to 
 argue freely," which has for something like three 
 centuries been the foundation of everything great in 
 England, to be thrown away ; and instead of it are we 
 to take time and eternity, hell and heaven, devil and 
 God, just as the priest thinks fit to give them to us ? 
 
 It surely must be worth while to enquire into the 
 causes of this great revolution, this return to the 
 beggarly elements, the Christianized paganism of the 
 unreformed Church of England. It is obvious enough, 
 of coui'se, that there is a certain class of people — not 
 very numerous, and on the other hand very frivolous — 
 
156 ON RITUALISM. 
 
 who prefer ceremonies for their own sake. They care 
 nothing about symbolism, because they rest in the sign 
 and never go beyond it. There are young curates, fresh 
 from the mystic fingers of the ordaining bishop, who 
 would find some unaccountable enjoyment in dressing 
 themselves up in all the ecclesiastical finery, and 
 " celebrating " the Eucharist even in their own bed- 
 rooms. The education of the clergy in this country can 
 scarcely fail to make them either heretics or " women " 
 — old women or young women, as the case may be. 
 Vicars and rectors, when they are not actively or 
 passively heretics, are old women ; and many "Catholic" 
 curates are young women. They think just as much as 
 any other silly girls do, about a sweet thing in satins or 
 lace ; and male girls dress up for mass, just as female 
 girls dress up for a ball. The chancel of a large church 
 is often much more spacious, considering the perform- 
 ances that are necessary, than the stage of a small 
 theatre ; and priests and deacons, epistolers and gospel- 
 ers, surpliced men and boys, banners and crosses, and 
 flowers, and the half-transparent mist of fragrant incense 
 — all these may be grouped together so artistically that 
 they may almost rival the transformation scene at a 
 pantomime. Very many, even in the Puritan sects, 
 prefer a gown because "it looks nice," and in like 
 manner a certain portion of our modern Ritualists — ^just 
 big enough and heavy enough to increase the momentum 
 of the whole moving mass — are Eitualists, because the 
 vestments merely, and the decorations, and the incense, 
 and the whole affair are uncommonly pretty. 
 
 Of course these frivolous empty-headed nobodies are 
 of exceedingly small importance. They are the genuine 
 causes of no true movement, and they never can be 
 
ON RITUALISM. 157 
 
 depended upon. They are the sort of people of whom 
 it would scarcely be using too bold a metaphor to say, 
 that they never can be saved excepting by being damned. 
 Their religion is relatively if not absolutely worse than 
 their irreligion. They are. just as insincere at church 
 as they are in a drawing-room ; only in a church they 
 are mocking God, and in a drawing-room they are only 
 mocking Mrs. Grundy. They never will know what 
 they are until they are stripped stark naked of every 
 pious conventionalism, and brought face to face with the 
 roughest realities of common conscience. The vagaries 
 ,of these people may happen to strengthen for a while 
 any cause whatever — like the votes of Irish Americans 
 — but they are the true citizens of no state. 
 
 There is, however, another cause of that revolution in 
 the English Church which is now attracting so much 
 attention, which though unquestionably of far more 
 importance than the love of finery, ecclesiastical or 
 otherwise, is nevertheless rather negative than positive. 
 I mean the fact that a large proportion, if not a majority 
 of the clergy, have no special claim whatever upon the 
 respect of the laity, excepting their official claim. In 
 other words, they obtain the special respect they receive 
 as clergymen, but not as men. They are not immoral, ' 
 for it may quite safely be taken for granted that in this 
 respect a clergyman is above suspicion. Doubtless 
 many clergymen still hunt, and so far may be called 
 " hunting parsons ; " but the extreme puritanism that 
 can object to a hunt is nearly dead, and Christianity is 
 perhaps none the worse for being muscular. Even 
 among Dissenters, what used to be called worldliness is 
 now judged as St. Paul would have us judge all such 
 matters ; and so long as a man has a clear conscience 
 
158 ON EITXJALISM. 
 
 and a good intention — " let every man be fully persuaded 
 in his own mind." 
 
 I am very far from meaning that the clergy are 
 regarded with a positive disrespect. When they are 
 gentlemen, and have had a good university education, 
 and can hold their own in any society in which they may 
 happen to be placed, they are no doubt respected, but 
 they are respected as gentlemen and not merely as 
 clergymen. So far as the duties of a clergyman consist 
 in reading prayers, the great wonder is that so very few 
 can be found capable of discharging them. It is quite 
 as easy to read the Liturgy as to read The Times news- 
 paper; and any decently educated charity boy can do 
 that. But what I mean by saying that the majority of 
 the clergy have no claim to respect except their of&cial 
 claim, is this; as ordinary, unpretending gentlemen 
 among gentlemen they would no doubt be more than 
 tolerated, but by virtue of their position as clergymen 
 they are expected to be the leaders and guides not of the 
 most ignorant and worst educated of a parish, but of the 
 least ignorant and best educated. They are to be able 
 ex officio, to answer any questions, to solve difficulties, 
 to give advice, and generally speaking to tell other people 
 what to believe and what to do, or at any rate what not 
 to believe and what not to do. Is the average curate as 
 a mere man — as the Kev. Verdant Green for instance — 
 in the least degree able to do this? It is perfectly 
 notorious that there are many, not only undergraduates 
 but ordained priests, who know absolutely nothing about 
 those great questions which are rapidly becoming the 
 questions for all earnest educated Englishmen. They 
 are, therefore, to be judged, not according to what they 
 are, but according to what their office imputes to them. 
 
ON RITUALISM. 159 
 
 There always has been, and until "we all come into 
 the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son 
 of God " there always will be, a sort of rivalry between 
 the prophet and the priest. The work of the prophet is 
 upon men, and the work of the priest is upon God. 
 Certain ceremonies have been regarded as necessary to 
 salvation, and those ceremonies the priest only could 
 perform. No doubt the ceremonies were supposed to 
 have a meaning; but the rites themselves were con- 
 sidered essential, whether they had a meaning or not. 
 It has, in fact, very frequently been considered an ad- 
 vantage that the meaning should be concealed, regarded 
 as a divine mystery, and protected from profanation by 
 solemn secrecy. No doubt when religion has been more 
 than mischievous superstition, whenever it has made 
 any appeal to the intellect or conscience of men, the 
 work of the priest has been greatly modified. He has 
 been compelled more or less to explain and justify his 
 own position as interposing between God and man. If 
 he could not show the intrinsic worth of those services, 
 vrhich it was his business to perform, he was, at any 
 rate, forced to appeal to some divine authority, some 
 distinct command from heaven, requiring them and 
 appointing him. Even then a merely external religion 
 is so exceedingly mischievous, so sure to demoralize 
 mankind, and to be made the occasion of all sorts of 
 tyranny, that no thinking man will ever believe in the 
 existence of a divine authority for a set of meaningless 
 or unexplained ceremonies. Hence, even among the 
 Jews, whose ritual was regarded as the special gift of 
 God, the priests were in almost every great crisis of the 
 nation's history on the wrong side. They were always 
 ready to sanctify by their mystic ceremonies almost 
 
160 ON BITUALISM. 
 
 every form of evil. Moreover, their whole life being 
 devoted to the performance of rites which in themselves 
 were mere mummery, they were always ready to multiply 
 ceremonies, and to introduce into the national religion 
 whatever foreign ritual might be so gorgeous and so 
 complicated as to enhance their own importance. 
 
 The one safeguard of the Jewish people, that which 
 preserved their very religion from becoming an abomi- 
 nation and a curse, was the wisdom and fidelity of the 
 prophets. These men also had a divine call ; and they 
 spoke with authority and power, because they believed 
 that they were uttering the very truth of God. Their 
 great nobleness and inestimable value are almost con- 
 cealed from us, because we have too often fixed our 
 attention exclusively upon the smallest part of their 
 teaching and work — their prediction of the events of a 
 distant future. That God is able to bestow upon any 
 man a miraculous foresight will scarcely be denied by 
 any one who believes that God is a Person, a free living 
 Being ; but as a matter of interpretation and BibUcal 
 criticism, it may safely be affirmed that the amount of 
 prediction — the foretelling in detail of future events — is 
 in the Old Testament extremely small. At any rate, the 
 prophets lived and worked for their own present, not 
 chiefly for ours ; it was their iwsight, far more than 
 their foresight, which made them what they were. 
 They were the reformers both of their Church and 
 State, rebuking at once the tyranny of the kings and the 
 godlessness of the priests. Apart from the symbolism 
 of the Jewish ritual, whenever its meaning was hidden 
 or denied, the ritual itself was a mockery ; it was not 
 only what God did not require, but it stood in the way 
 of what God did require. Both negatively and positively 
 
ON EITUALISM. 161 
 
 it was a curse. At the best the sacrifices of the old law 
 were always bordering on fatal delusion, were always in 
 danger of actually inverting the truth concerning God. 
 Nothing was easier than to regard them as the cause, 
 instead of the effect,- of the divine charity; as the sub- 
 stitutes, rather than the signs, of the true repentance 
 and responsive love of God's people. To the prophets, 
 therefore, the ritual itself, notwithstanding its divine 
 origin, was an object of suspicion ; it was like the brazen 
 serpent, luring men to a most dangerous, because a most 
 subtile, idolatry. "We hesitate to set up in the temple 
 of Jehovah an image that our own hands have made ; 
 but we quite easily persuade ourselves that we may 
 laudably worship what God Himself gave us to use. 
 
 Hence the burning words of the prophets are directed 
 against the ritual itself, and not only against the abuses 
 of ritual. Abuses are very often incurable, such as 
 never can be removed. They penetrate the very sub- 
 stance of an institution, till they actually take the place 
 of the institution, displacing it as a heavier gas displaces 
 a lighter ; and their separate existence is no longer a 
 present fact, but a curious revelation of obscure history. 
 It is doubtful whether any part whatever of the original 
 "Communion" was to be found in the Sacrifice of the 
 Mass at the time of the Eeformation; and often the 
 Jewish prophets perceived that the ancient sacrifices 
 were actually denying what they had been appointed to 
 affirm. 
 
 Thus one of the psalmists, speaking in the name of 
 the Lord, refuses, and almost forbids, the sacrifices 
 which God himself had required. " Hear, my 
 people, and I will speak; Israel, and I will testify 
 against thee : I am God, even thy God. I will not 
 
162 ON EITUALISM. 
 
 reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt-offerings, to 
 have been continually before me. I will take no bullock 
 out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds. For 
 every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a 
 thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains : 
 and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were 
 hungry, I would not tell thee : for the world is mine, 
 and the fulness thereof. WiU I eat the flesh of bulls, 
 or drink the blood of goats ? Offer unto God thanks- 
 giving ; and pay thy vows unto the most High : And 
 call upon me in the day of trouble : I will deliver 
 thee, and thou shalt glorify me. . . . Whoso offereth 
 praise glorifieth me : and to him that ordereth his 
 conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God." 
 (Ps. 1. 7—15, 23.) 
 
 Isaiah is even more bold. " Hear the word of the 
 Lord, ye rulers of Sodom ; give ear unto the law of our 
 God, ye people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the 
 multitude of your sacrifices unto me ? saith the Lord : 
 I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of 
 fed beasts ; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, 
 or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear 
 before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread 
 my courts ? Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is 
 an abomination unto me ; the new moons and sabbaths, 
 the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is 
 iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons 
 and your appointed feasts my soul hateth : they are a 
 trouble unto me ; I am weary to bear them. And when 
 ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from 
 you : yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear : 
 your hands are full of blood." (Isaiah i. 10 — 15.) 
 
 In a great calamity it is not sacrifices to which Joel 
 
ON EITUALISM. 163 
 
 calls the people, but true repentance and simple trust 
 in the boundless mercy of God ; while Micah gives a 
 solemn warning that the costliest offerings, without 
 goodness, are nothing worth. " Wherewith shall I 
 come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high 
 God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, 
 with calyes of a year old ? Will the Lord be pleased 
 with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers 
 of oil ? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, 
 the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? He hath 
 shewed thee, man, what is good ; and what doth the 
 Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, 
 and to walk humbly with thy God ?" (Micah vi. 6 — 8.) 
 
 It is a peculiar benefit of the Christian religion, its 
 special security against corruption, that it has no priest- 
 hood, and no sacrifice. It is founded upon the fact that 
 a perfect revelation of God has been, once for all, given 
 to men in the Incarnate Son ; and that a perfect sacri- 
 fice has been, once for all, in the Incarnate Son, offered 
 to God. The need of propitiating God is, therefore, for 
 ever at an end ; and the occupation of the priest is gone. 
 What propitiation there is in Christ is, doubtless, much 
 disputed ; and even His sacrifice has, over and over 
 again, been paganized. But, at any rate, "it is 
 finished." Whatever God wanted Christ gave; what- 
 ever inan wants Christ lives to bestow. What remains, 
 therefore, to Christianity is the prophet — the teacher — 
 to expound the meaning of the old signs, to bring out of 
 the treasury of the Lord things new and old. No longer 
 even Moses with face veiled; but "we all, with open 
 face, beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are 
 changed into the same image." 
 
 Unhappily, in returning to Judaism — or rather to 
 
 M2 
 
164 ON EITUALISM. 
 
 heathenism itself — Christianity has made the most fatal 
 of all mistakes. It has not only restored the priest, but 
 it has united priesthood and prophecy in the same office. 
 But for the separation, not to say opposition, of these 
 two, Judaism, notwithstanding its divine origin, would 
 have become a debasing superstition ; and Christianity 
 has become a debasing superstition, through centuries of 
 time, and among hundreds of millions of people, by 
 means of their union. For when the two are united the 
 priest will always overmaster the prophet. How can it 
 possibly be otherwise ? The prophetic office needs 
 courage, insight, effort — it has oftener been rewarded 
 with sorrow than with worldly honour — its crown, for 
 the most part, like the Master's, a crown of thorns. 
 The priest's office needs absolutely nothing but human 
 nature, and can be content with very corrupt human 
 nature too. It needs explain nothing ; it can dispense 
 with all wisdom and insight. And when its only cor- 
 rective is itself, the hope of amendment is obviously at 
 its minimum. Moreover principles which, at the best, 
 can only be applied to bare ceremonies, become applied 
 to teaching and exposition. The priest tells us to do 
 something, without any reason why ; and the priest- 
 prophet tells us that it is right, and wise, and reasonable, 
 and necessary to do something — because it is. 
 
 Now dumb prophets will always be sorely tempted to 
 become prophet-priests. A genuine prophet has God's 
 mark upon him. "Is not the Lord's word like a fire, 
 and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces ?" A 
 mere priest may have man's mark upon him — a shaven 
 crown, for instance, or a long coat — but he might as well 
 be appointed by lot, or by tossing a penny, as by the 
 bands of a bishop. The majority of the English clergy 
 
ON EITUALISM. 165 
 
 are most unmistakeably not prophets ; they cannot 
 teach ; therefore they become prophet-priests. That is 
 what I mean by saying that some of them take to 
 " rituahsm," because the only superiority they can pre- 
 tend to possess is a merely official superiority. They are 
 esteemed in their high place only as clergymen, not as 
 men ; they have no personal superiority. * 
 
 And yet it must be acknowledged that the Book of 
 Common Prayer itself is most imperfectly reformed. 
 There are some grand phrases in the Prayer Book that 
 might easily enough lead a young man, newly ordained, 
 to imagine himself invested with superhuman powers. 
 Scarcely anything can be more misleading than the 
 "Form and Manner of Ordering of Priests." When the 
 bishop says, "Eeceive the Holy Ghost for the of&ce and 
 work of a priest in the Church of God now committed 
 unto thee by the imposition of our hands. Whose sins 
 thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins 
 thou dost retain, they are retained" — it is not unnatural 
 that the newly-ordained priest should imagine himself 
 the recipient of mystic powers which raise him far above 
 the level of ordinary Christians. He will find this view 
 of what has been done to him strengthened by the fact, 
 that he will now be permitted to perform those solemn 
 services which had been forbidden him even as a deacon. 
 He will be permitted to consecrate the bread and wine for 
 the Holy Communion, and to pronounce the absolution 
 of the penitent. And perhaps the reverence with which 
 
 * If anybody doubts the fact of the inefficiency as teachers, 
 preachers, prophets, of the Anglican clergy, let him read the 
 reports of Church Congresses, etc., or such books as Mr. Gee's 
 Our Sermons, or the advertisements of MS. sermons for sale. 
 
166 ON RITUALISM. 
 
 a newly-ordained minister will regard Lis own priest- 
 hood may often be considered as a sign of that devout 
 earnestness which, for the work of the ministry, can 
 surely never be in excess. 
 
 Indeed, no one will deny that public service, espe- 
 cially in small country churches, was often performed 
 with the most disreputable slovenliness ; and that the 
 revival of Eitualism has done very much to lessen, if not 
 to remove, this scandal. It must, however, not be for- 
 gotten that this is not the direct, but only an indirect 
 effect of recent innovations. "While," says the Bishop 
 of St. David's,* " I would readily admit that which is 
 often urged in defence of the Ritualistic movement, that 
 in many of our churches there is large room for im- 
 provement in the prevailing practice of our public wor- 
 ship, I cannot find in this fact anything to justify, or 
 indeed to account for, the recent innovations. In the 
 first place, the resources of the Prayer Book were very 
 far from exhausted. Experience, as far as it went, 
 tended to show that a closer observance of its directions, 
 and a fuller use of the means it places at our disposal, 
 without the smallest excess over that which is perfectly 
 legitimate and unquestionably authorized, would com- 
 monly suf&ce to relieve our services from that monotony 
 which has been the subject of complaint ... . As to 
 ourselves .... choral associations have been lately 
 formed in three of our archdeaconries, whose example 
 will no doubt ere long be followed by the fourth. We 
 have thus ground to hope that the voice of melody will 
 be more frequently heard in our churches to inspirit the 
 strains of praise and thanksgiving, and that the ' psalms 
 
 * Charge, at his ninth visitation, October, 1866, page 86. 
 
ON EIT0ALISM. 167 
 
 and hymns and spiritual songs,' which were meant to be 
 the expression of pious feelings, will not always be made 
 to serve merely as additional lessons." 
 
 Thus far then in the mere improvement of the mode 
 of conducting public service, the reforming clergy might 
 have been content to learn a lesson even from the Non- 
 conformists. What was needed to make the pubHc 
 worship in a parish church reverent and inspiriting, 
 was godly earnestness and common sense. If the zeal 
 of Primitive Methodists was sometimes wanting in dis- 
 cretion, if their earnestness was often noisy and dis- 
 orderly, the Prayer Book itself was certain to counteract 
 the extravagances of holy fervour. But even the most 
 riotous sincerity of earnest Christian men is perhaps 
 more like genuine worship than the outward posture 
 and most probably the inward frame " of persons lis- 
 tening, respectfully or otherwise, to some devotional 
 utterances which pass between the minister and the 
 clerk."* 
 
 But the unmistakeable object of recent innovations 
 was to restore not a more profitable, but a more catholic 
 usage. The ordinary services in what are called the 
 "high" churches are, to many people, even as a matter 
 of taste, exceedingly unpleasant. The Gregorian chants 
 are, to most ears, insufferably dreary ; and the miserable 
 sing-song in which the priests intone the prayers is, to 
 most ordinary worshippers, quite apart from doctrinal 
 considerations, excessively disagreeable. Probably no 
 human being in his senses sings his prayers at his own 
 bedside; and apart from some acoustic necessity the 
 singing of prayers in the church seems on the face of it 
 
 * Bishop of St. David's Charge, p. 85. 
 
168 ON RITUALISM. 
 
 ridiculous. But the object of the Eitualists seems to be 
 to separate everything sacerdotal from common life ; and 
 to return almost to that superstition in which words are 
 not to be used as conveying a meaning, but muttered, 
 half articulately, as magic incantations. 
 
 The Eitualist movement is, again, so obviously a 
 reaction against "scepticism" that even the "evan- 
 gelical" clergy, though unquestionably Protestant, are 
 sorely perplexed how to deal with that large body who, 
 whatever else they may be, are uncompromising oppo- 
 nents of every form of "rationalism." It is this feeling 
 that keeps men like the Bishop of Gloucester oscillating 
 with hopeless indecision between opposing dangers; 
 forgetting, meanwhile, that in the present state of the 
 Church indecision may be even worse than error — can 
 indeed scarcely fail to be error on both sides. 
 
 It is becoming more and more obvious that we are 
 drawing near to that issue which, to most thoughtful 
 persons, has long seemed the only issue — Is our religion 
 to be founded on, or at any rate to be arrived at, by 
 reason or by authority ? For a long time Churchmen 
 have been halting between two opinions ; and the result 
 was the sort of nescience which Dr. Newman has visited 
 vrith withering scorn. Even while still in the Anglican 
 Church, hating "liberalism" as he hated the very devil, 
 he reserved his loathing and contempt for the mass of 
 empty verbiage or suicidal contradictions which, for the 
 majority of the members of the Established Church, took 
 the place of orthodoxy. " In the present day, I said, * 
 mistiness is the mother of wisdom. A man who can set 
 down half a dozen general propositions, which escape 
 
 * Apologia, pp. 193, 194. 
 
ON RITUALISM. 169 
 
 from destroying one another only by being diluted into 
 truisms ; who can hold the balance between opposites so 
 skilfully as to do without fulcrum or beam ; who never 
 enunciates a truth without guarding himself against 
 being supposed to exclude the contradictory ; who bolds 
 that Scripture is the only authority, yet that the Church 
 is to be deferred to ; that faith only justifies, yet that 
 it does not justify without works ; that grace does not 
 depend on the sacraments, yet is not given without 
 them; that bishops are a divine ordinance, yet those 
 who have them not are in the same religious condition 
 as those who have ; — this is your safe man, and the hope 
 of the Church; — this is what the Church is said to want, 
 not party men, but sensible, temperate, sober, well- 
 judging persons, to guide it through the channel of 
 no-meaning, between the Scylla and Charybdis of Aye 
 and No. 
 
 " This state of things, however, I said could not last, 
 if men were to read and think. They will not keep 
 standing in that very attitude which you call sound 
 Church of Englandism or orthodox Protestantism. 
 They cannot go on for ever standing on one leg, or 
 sitting without a chair, or walking with their feet. tied, 
 or grazing like Tityrus's stags in the air. They will 
 take one view or another, but it will be a" consistent view. 
 It may be Liberalism, or Erastianism, or Popery, or 
 Catholicity ; but it will be real." 
 
 So again,* "As to Liberalism, we think the for- 
 mularies of the Church will ever, with the aid of a good 
 Providence, keep it from making any serious inroads 
 upon the clergy. Besides, it is too cold a principle to 
 
 * Apologia, p. 193. 
 
170 ON EITUALISM. 
 
 prevail with the multitude. But as regarded what was 
 called Evangelical Eeligion or Puritanism, there was 
 more to cause alarm. I observed upon its organization; 
 but, on the other hand, it had no intellectual basis, no' 
 internal idea, no principle of unity, no theology. 'Its 
 adherents,' I said, ' are already separating from each 
 other ; they will melt away like a snow-drift. It has 
 no straightforward view on any one point on which it 
 professes to teach ; and to hide its poverty it has dressed 
 itself out in a maze of words. We have no dread of it 
 at all ; we only fear what it may lead to. It does not 
 stand on intrenched ground, or make any pretence to a 
 position ; it does but occupy the space between contend- 
 ing powers — Catholic Truth and Rationalism. Then, 
 indeed, will be the stern encounter, when two real and 
 living principles, simple, entire, and consistent — one in 
 the Church, the other out of it — at length rush upon 
 each other, contending not for names and words, or half- 
 views, but for elementary notions and distinctive moral 
 characters.' " 
 
 The Eitualist party in the English Church have not 
 yet come to see, what Dr. Newman discovered long ago, 
 that their position is almost as inconsistent, and there- 
 fore as unsafe, as that of the Evangelicals themselves. 
 Indeed the Evangelicals have a very considerable ad- 
 vantage over the Ritualists in this circumstance, that 
 their inconsistencies are not fatal to evangelical doctrine, 
 whereas even the very slightest inconsistency is instantly 
 and completely fatal to the Anglo- Catholic system. No 
 doubt the Evangelicals have a theory — though none of 
 them can tell us what it is — of inspiration ; and, at any 
 rate, derive, or believe that they derive, every article of 
 their faith from Holy Scripture. But so long as they 
 
ON RITUALISM. 171 
 
 can keep their doctrines, they are perfectly willing, for 
 strategical purposes, to reserve or hold in abeyance the 
 consideration of the authority upon which they are 
 founded. Besides which, they may be very formidable 
 opponents, even if they have no principles whatever of 
 any sort. A man may surely pull down a wall without 
 being an architect, or even so much as a common brick- 
 layer. And when any party in the Church, or any party 
 out of the Church, ask the Ritualists for the authority of 
 their new book of Leviticus, they have no answer what- 
 ever to give. The liturgy of the so-called Irvingites is 
 in many respects far nearer to the ancient English use, 
 and to the Prayer Book of 1549, than the Book of 
 Common Prayer itself; it has in its Eucharistic of&ce 
 a distinct commemoration of the Virgin and saints and 
 all the faithful departed, a very conspicuous doctrine of 
 real presence, and a prayer invoking the descent of the 
 Holy Ghost upon the bread and wine, in order that they 
 may become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. More- 
 over, these so-called Irvingites are as careful as the 
 Anglo- Catholics themselves about symbolical colours 
 and vestments and the observance of the canonical 
 hours. But none of these Anglican priests would admit 
 for a moment that the "Irvingites" have authority for 
 their usages. The Eitualists refer, indeed, to canons 
 and rubrics of the wwreformed Church ; but who gives 
 them the power to take what they like, and leave what 
 they do not like ? In plain English, however much, or 
 however little, the Church of Englaiid differs from the 
 Church of Rome, the whole of the difference is based 
 upon Rationalism. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Ritualists do not see this, and are 
 therefore protesting for the principle of authority ; and 
 
172 ON EITTJALISM. 
 
 the Evangelicals do not see it, and are themselves still 
 hostile to Eationalism. The crisis has not quite come 
 yet, but it is getting near. The battle between authority 
 and reason must be fought out; and those who try, 
 during that conflict, to walk along the via media, will be 
 cut to pieces by the shot of both the. opposing hosts. 
 But it is a mean return that the Anglo-Catholics make 
 to the Evangelicals. If it had not been for them the 
 Tractarians would long ago have been destroyed. 
 
 The great cause of the Ritualist innovations is the 
 change in the doctrines of the clergy of the Established 
 Church. These doctrines, of which rites and ceremonies 
 are merely the expressions and symbols, may or may 
 not have been in the Prayer Book and Homilies for 
 three hundred years ; but they certainly were not in the 
 sermons or beliefs of English Establishment clergymen 
 before the late revival. The dogma of apostolical 
 succession, of the dignity of the priesthood, and of the 
 real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the 
 Holy Communion, had become so completely unrealized, 
 that when they were restored they were regarded as 
 sheer novelties. All these dogmas, jointly and severally, 
 are involved in the Ritualist revival. I will consider 
 first and chiefly the last — the dogma of the real presence. 
 
 Any doctrine whatever of the real presence of Christ 
 in the consecrated bread and wine confounds a person 
 with a thing, spirit with not-spirit. The attributes of a 
 living spirit and of baked flour are mutually exclusive, 
 and no mummeries or incantations can combine them. 
 The chemical character and nutritive properties, the 
 weight, the smell, the colour of baked flour, may indeed 
 be referred to the supreme Will — and so may everything 
 else. But even as an expression of the divine will a bit 
 
ON EITUALISM. 173 
 
 of bread can reveal God only within the limits of its own 
 expressiveness. If the whole divinity, the complete God, 
 is in a bit of bread, then it could scarcely be doubted 
 that the complete God is infinitely inferior to the meanest 
 living man. At the time of the Reformation it is not 
 wonderful that the only true and rational doctrine of the 
 Eucharist was rejected ; because that Eeformation was 
 only the beginning of the end, and was determined as 
 much by expediency as by principle, by the wrath of men 
 as by the righteousness of God. But the Anglican 
 doctrine of the Sacraments has every evil of the Trident- 
 ine doctrine, and none of its consistency. 
 
 Not, indeed, that much of what is to be found in the 
 Anglican formularies can be compelled to give evidence 
 in favour of the Eitualists by any process short of 
 torture. At the back of the title-page of the Directmium 
 Anglicanum we read : " Let this sacrament be in such 
 wise done and ministered ... as the good fathers in the 
 primitive Church frequented it." {Homil., h. ii.) Now 
 this advice is by no means unsound, because the primitive 
 Church is very far from being the medieval Church. 
 There is a kind of critical simplicity about the Ritualists 
 that can scarcely be distinguished from guile. They are, 
 or affect to be, ignorant of the fact that ecclesiastical 
 literature swarms with forgeries ; and that there is no 
 more reason to suppose that any one of the apostles 
 composed a liturgy than that Julius Cassar composed 
 Macaulay's History of England. When they talk about 
 the " Liturgy of St. James," they are simply talking 
 nonsense ; and it is very difficult to believe that they 
 are not perfectly aware that they are talking nonsense. 
 But, at any rate, it is quite certain that they know per- 
 fectly well what is to be found in the Homilies ; and to 
 
174 ON RITUALISM. 
 
 put tlie extract that I have just quoted at the head of the 
 Directorium Anglicamim is, to say the least, most culpably 
 unfair. Even the omitted portion of the one sentence 
 ia fatal to the use which is made of the quotation. 
 " But before all other things, this we must be sure of 
 especially, that this supper be in such wise done and 
 ministered as our Lord and Saviour did and ccmmanded, 
 to be done, as His hoiy apostles used it, and the good 
 fathers in the primitive Church frequented it." * There 
 are many things doubtful in the world, and few things 
 certain ; but among those few things, unquestionably this 
 is one — that the supper that Jesus Christ and the apostles 
 frequented was in no such wise done and ministered as 
 the Directorixhm Anglicanum requires. But the unfair- 
 ness and irrelevance of the garbled quotation to which I 
 am referring is still more apparent when we consider the 
 rest of what this homily contains. " Our loving Saviour 
 hath ordained and established the remembrance of His 
 great mercy expressed in His passion in the institution 
 of His heavenly supper, where every one of us must be 
 guests, and not gazers ; eaters, and not lookers ; feeding 
 ourselves, and not hiring others to feed for us ; that we 
 may live by our own meat, and not perish for hunger, 
 while others devour all." t " Neither can he be devout 
 that otherwise doth presume than it was given by the 
 author. We must, then, take heed, lest of the memory 
 it be made a sacrifice ; lest of a communion it be made 
 a private eating ; lest of two parts we have but one ; 
 lest, applying it for the dead, we lose the fruit that be 
 alive." I " Ought not we, then, by the monition of the 
 
 * Homilies, (Oxford, 1840), p. 396. f Ibid., p. 396. 
 
 J Ibid., p. 396. 
 
ON EITTJALISM. 175 
 
 wise man, by the wisdom of God, by the fearful example 
 of the Corinthians, to take advised heed that we thrust 
 not ourselves to this table with rude and unreverent 
 ignorance, the smart whereof Christ's church hath rued 
 and lamented these many days and years ? For what 
 hath been the cause of the ruin of God's religion but the 
 ignorance hereof? What hath been the cause of this 
 gross idolatry but the ignorance hereof? What hath 
 been the cause of this mwmmish massing but the 
 ignorance hereof? Yea, what hath been, and what is at 
 this day, the cause of this want of love and charity but 
 the ignorance hereof ? Let us, therefore, so travail to 
 understand the Lord's Supper that we be no cause of the 
 decay of God's worship, of no idolatry, of no dumb 
 massing, of no hate and malice; so that we may the 
 boldlier have access thither to our comfort." * " Now it 
 foUoweth to have with this knowledge a sure and constant 
 faith, not only that the death of Christ is available for 
 the redemption of all the world, for the remission of 
 gins, and reconciliation with God the Father ; but also 
 that He hath made upon His cross a full and sufficient 
 sacrifice for thee, a perfect cleansing of thy sins, so 
 that thou acknowledgest no other Sa'viour, Eedeemer, 
 Mediator, Advocate, Intercessor, but Christ only; and 
 that thou mayest say vrith the apostle, that He loved 
 thee, and gave Himself for thee. For this is to stick 
 fast to Christ's promise made in His institution, to 
 make Christ thine own, and to apply His merits unto 
 thyself. Herein thou needest no other man's help, no 
 other sacrifice or oblation, no sacrificing priest, no mass, 
 no means established by man's invention." f "And 
 
 * Homilies, pp. 397, 398. f Il'id., p. 399. 
 
176 ON BITUALISM. 
 
 truly as the bodily meat cannot feed the outward man, 
 unless it be let into a stomach and. digested which is 
 healthful and sound, no more can the inward man be 
 fed, except his meat be received into his soul and heart, 
 sound and whole in faith. Therefore, said Cyprian, 
 when we do these things, we need not to whet our teeth, 
 but with sincere faith we break and divide that whole 
 bread. It is well known that the meat we seek for in 
 this supper is spiritual food, the nourishment of our 
 soul, a heavenly refection, and not earthly ; an invisible 
 meat, and not bodily; a ghostly substance, and not 
 carnal ; so that to think that without faith we may enjoy 
 the eating and drinking thereof, or that that is the 
 fruition of it, is but to dream of gross carnal feeding, 
 basely subjecting and binding ourselves to the elements 
 and creatures. Whereas, by the advice of the Council 
 of Nice, we ought to lift up our minds by faith, and 
 leaving these inferior and earthly things, there seek it 
 where the Sun of righteousness ever shineth. Take, 
 then, this lesson, thou that art desirous of this table, 
 of Emissenus, a godly father, that when thou goest up 
 to the reverend communion to be satisfied with spiritual 
 meats, thou look up with faith upon the holy body and 
 blood of thy God, thou marvel with reverence, thou touch 
 it with the mind, thou receive it with the hand of thy 
 heart, and thou take it fully with thy inward man." * 
 
 This, positively this, is the homily which, by impli- 
 cation, we are required to regard as justifying the 
 Directorium Anglicanum. There has scarcely ever been 
 written a more utterly loathsome book ; and it would be 
 a comfort if every one of the foundations upon which it 
 
 * Homilies, pp. 399, 400. 
 
ON RITUALISM. 177 
 
 rests were as completely rotten as this appeal to the 
 Homilies. But, unfortunately, though there can be no 
 doubt whatever about the general intention of the 
 Eeformers, yet many terms, especially technical terms, 
 were allowed to remain in the Anglican formularies, 
 through which almost every Popish superstition might 
 easily make its way. Nay, even the Eeformers them- 
 selves were by no means completely set free from the 
 bondage of old formularies. They had a firm grasp of 
 the genuine substance; but they still called it, with 
 more or less inconsistency, by names that were wholly 
 unsuitable. They had come to understand what the 
 Lord's Supper really was, but they were still vainly 
 endeavouring to express the newly-discovered truth by 
 the words which had long been appropriated to the 
 mysteries of the mass. When Jesus Christ took bread 
 and brake it — when, in fact, he instituted the Lord's 
 Supper — it was at a social meal. The apostles who 
 were "present were dressed like ordinary Jews. Jesus 
 Christ was to them a genuine friend, a true prophet of 
 God ; nay, indeed, such a revealer of the Father, that it 
 seemed to them almost as if they had never known God 
 before. In His miracles He had shown them not simply 
 the power of God — which they had never doubted, and 
 which had stifled them like a nightmare — but the 
 gentleness of the power of the Almighty, its orderliness 
 and its perfect love. In His parables He had made them 
 understand how everything about them was a portion of 
 the divine order ; how the common facts of life and the 
 processes of nature were revelations of the kingdom of 
 heaven ; how even Solomon himself, with all his glory, 
 was not aiTayed like one of the lilies of the field, 
 " Heaven was about them ; " they felt that they were 
 
 N 
 
178 ON EITUALISM. 
 
 living in heaven, that everything vras full of God, that 
 He was looking out upon His human children through 
 every form of heauty, and teaching them in all sweet 
 sounds to join in the great chorus with which all His 
 works were praising Him. For many months the 
 disciples had been spiritually living upon Christ. They 
 knew perfectly well that their life would have been 
 dwarfed and poor without Him ; it was not their bodies 
 that Christ had fed ; on the contrary, they had fed His 
 body. But, on the other hand, it was not the bodily 
 life that was the highest. Who knows what these 
 apostles were physically ? Or, in defiance of all tradition, 
 imagination might picture them with all kinds of physical 
 defects. One or other of them might have been blind, 
 or dumb, or deaf, or lame, with all manner of "thorns 
 in the flesh; " nevertheless, Jesus Christ had been to one 
 and all of them, saving Judas Iscariot, "the bread of life." 
 So now at this Last Supper they could not be surprised 
 when Jesus Christ uttered the words, "This is my body, 
 this cup is the new covenant in my blood." Could they 
 possibly dream that He meant they were to eat Him ? 
 That with their actual teeth they were to chew and grind 
 His flesh, having carefully abstained even from first 
 washing their teeth, lest pure water should have entered 
 into their stomachs before the Incarnate God ? Is it 
 possible that they could so far have forgotten what 
 Christ Himself had said about that which goeth into the 
 mouth ? They were met together to commemorate a 
 great deliverance — the deliverance of the children of 
 Israel out of the house of bondage. They were not 
 members of the same family, not kinsmen according to 
 the flesh ; but they were brought together by a common 
 spiritual purpose, and the reason why they were brought 
 
ON BITDAIISM. 179 
 
 together was simply this, that they had been bound 
 together by Christ. 
 
 If the words of the Saviour may be paraphrased into 
 the elaborate rubrics of the Directorium Anglicanum, it 
 may surely not be irreverent for any one to try to expand 
 the meaning which those few words imply. " When- 
 ever you meet together to eat bread, remember Him who 
 used to bless it for you ; who made you understand that 
 it was a gift of your Heavenly Father's love, a symbol 
 and a promise of the better bread which nourishes the 
 soul. You know what the life eternal is. ' This is life 
 eternal, to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, 
 whom God has sent.' That which feeds your spirit, 
 which keeps alive and strengthens in you this eternal 
 life, is myself. I am that true bread which comes down 
 from heaven, and you would never have known how near 
 God is to you, and how much He cares about you, if I 
 had not come down to the world to live with you. It is 
 through becoming like you, by means of that very body 
 which can become hungry and thirsty and tired, and 
 tortured with pain, that I helped you to know what God 
 really is, and so nourished in you the eternal life. And 
 you will know Him better still, and the life of your 
 spirits will be stronger than ever, when I have poured out 
 even my blood that you and all men may be set free from 
 the bondage of sin. Whenever, then, you meet together, 
 as you are met together now, thank God for the bread 
 which strengtheneth man's heart, and the wine that 
 makes his heart glad ; and remember that you have no 
 need to be. afraid even of them that kill the body, and 
 after that have no more they can do. If you can get no 
 food to eat, you must not forget * that man doth not live 
 by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of 
 
 N 2 
 
180 ON EITUALISM. 
 
 the moutli of God.' I am the Word of God, and I have 
 come down to you, and taken this body and this hlood, 
 in order that you may be nourished by God's Word. It 
 is much better for you that I should go away, or else, 
 perhaps, you might begin to think that the flesh and 
 blood I have taken, for the sake of being better able to 
 teach you what God is, were themselves God. You 
 might begin to think that when you could not see me, 
 or speak to me, or hear me speak to you, you were quite 
 out of God's sight, and could have no fellowship with 
 Him. Therefore I shall go away from you ; and when I 
 am gone you will know me much better than you do 
 now ; you wrill have that very same spirit given to you 
 which has enabled me always to trust in my Father, and 
 always to do His will. When that spirit comes upon you, 
 you will know that ' the Father is in me, and I in him, 
 and you all one in us.' But you must never forget that 
 I really did come to you, and live with you ; that I used 
 to eat bread and drink wine with you ; that I had a real 
 body and blood, such as yours. You must, therefore, 
 keep your bodies holy and pure ; and you must 
 remember that what I made you understand about God 
 by coming and living with you vdll be always true for 
 you, and for all men. Meet together, therefore, as we 
 are met together now, and break bread, and say, ' This 
 is the body of Christ.' Drink wine, and say, ' This is 
 the new covenant in Christ's blood.' When you say these 
 words you will remember me, and you will remember 
 your Father in heaven, and you will remember what sort 
 of covenant of grace and mercy it is that God has made 
 with you and with all men." 
 
 Something like this I believe to have been the mean- 
 ing of Christ's words at the Last Supper ; and it must 
 
ON EITTJALISM. 181 
 
 not be forgotten that the narrative of the eyangelists, 
 taken alone, contains only the slightest hint that the 
 service was ever to be repeated. St. Matthew and St, 
 Mark say nothing at all that would imply such a repe- 
 tition. St. Luke says only concerning the breaking of 
 bread, " This do in remembrance of me." A very 
 steadfast and probable tradition, however, identifies the 
 author of the third Gospel with the friend and companion 
 of St. Paul ; and in that case, St. Luke's account of the 
 Last Supper may have been modified by the teaching of 
 the apostle himself. The fullest account that we have 
 of what Christ did, " the same night in which he was 
 betrayed," is to be found in the Epistle to the Corinthians 
 (1 Cor. xi. 23—26). " For I have received of the Lord 
 that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord 
 Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took 
 bread. And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and 
 said. Take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you ; 
 this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner 
 also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying. This 
 cup is the new testament in my blood : this do ye, as 
 oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often 
 as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the 
 Lord's death till he come." 
 
 It is by no means easy to explain the words, " I have 
 received of the Lord;" though nothing is easier than to 
 suggest a number of pure hypotheses, any one of which 
 would, if true, furnish a sufficient explanation. Bengel, 
 for instance, cuts the knot of the difficulty by the single 
 word " immediate." So Olshausen affirms, without so 
 much even as attempting to prove, that " Exegetically 
 the airo tov Kvplov cannot be otherwise received than 
 with the antithesis ovk air' avOpmirmv, as expressly 
 
182 
 
 ON RITUALISM. 
 
 stated by Paul in Gal. i. 12. Accordingly we liave here 
 an authentic declaration of the risen Saviour Himself 
 concerning His sacrament." There can be no doubt 
 whatever that St. Paul claims to have received the 
 Gospel, not of man, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. 
 But there is not the least reason to suppose that Jesus 
 Christ could reveal truth only by Himself appearing in 
 a bodily form ; in that case, indeed, it is difBcult to 
 perceive how the resurrection and ascension of the 
 Saviour can be otherwise regarded than as a most serious 
 loss. In fact, this was the very mistake into which St. 
 Paul's enemies were continually falling ; they disputed 
 his apostleship for that very reason that he had not 
 known Christ after the flesh. Dean Alford simply 
 asserts, dogmatically, " Eeceived from the Lord by 
 special revelation," — with reference to Gal. i. 12. Dean 
 Stanley, on the other hand, who is much more unfettered 
 in his treatment of the Pauline epistles, says, " The use 
 of the words TrapeXa^ov and irape^ajKa, as in xv. 3, is 
 against his derivation of the fact from immediate reve- 
 lation. But the introduction of the phrase ' from the 
 Lord ' may perhaps mean that he had confirmed to him 
 by revelation what he already knew as a fact." But 
 whatever the meaning of this disputed phrase may be, 
 St. Paul's account of the institution of the Lord's 
 Supper, where it differs from the narrative of the 
 evangelists, renders that narrative more simple and in- 
 teUigible. The words, This is my body, if taken alone, 
 might possibly be tortured into the expression of a 
 profound mystery, partly theological, partly philosophi- 
 cal, and chiefly carnal. But the words, Do this in 
 remembrance of me, show us exactly what the mystery- 
 is ; and it may safely be affirmed that if the apostles had 
 
ON RITUALISM. 183 
 
 known that Jesus Christ meant anything like what the 
 mediaeval doctors supposed Him to mean, the disorders 
 of the Corinthian Church would have been impossible. 
 But anybody who can get the mass out of the first 
 Epistle to the Corinthians is past argument. 
 
 I believe, then, that in the bread and wine employed 
 in the Eucharist there is actually no presence of Jesus 
 Christ whatever of any sort. After consecration the 
 elements remain exactly what they were before con- 
 secration. The whole and the only effect of the 
 consecration is upon the minds of men, and not upon 
 the matter of the sacrament, much less upon Almighty 
 God. If this be not accepted as the true state of the 
 case, it matters next to nothing what theory of the real 
 presence in the bread and wine may be adopted. It is 
 the great defect of the Book of Common Prayer and of 
 the other formularies of the Established Church that, 
 while distinctly excluding the dogma of transubstanti- 
 ation, they have left room for, and have actually 
 encouraged, a great number of theories, not one of 
 which is a bit more reasonable or a bit less superstitious 
 than transubstantiation itself. When the author of the 
 Christian Year publishes a treatise upon Eucharistical 
 Adoration, and when the members of the Church of 
 England are taught that when they swallow the con- 
 secrated wafer they take not only the flesh and blood of 
 Jesus, but the whole Godhead into their bodies, does any- 
 body in his senses care one jot or tittle by what particular 
 theory these monstrous absurdities may be justified ? 
 
 Transubstantiation itself belongs rather to philosophy 
 than to theology. It involves a certain belief about 
 substance and attributes which, whether true or false, 
 can by no means be confined to the substance and 
 
184 ON EITTJALISM. 
 
 attributes of bread and wine. Modern pbilosophy, the 
 pMlosophy that derives all its information from the 
 senses, refuses to acknowledge the existence of substance 
 at all. Bread, this philosophy teaches us, is but the 
 name we give to a number of co-existing sensations in 
 ourselves. But, supposing there be some actual sub- 
 stance which diiFers from other substances, and which is 
 manifested to us by those differences, if we recognize its 
 presence by a certain chemical composition, colour, scent, 
 taste, density, then, in the absence of all these marks 
 and characteristics, the substance itself would cease to 
 attract our attention, or would become identified with 
 some other substance. In like manner, the presence of 
 a totally different set of marks and characteristics would 
 indicate to us the presence of an altogether different 
 substance. In other words, we recognize the presence 
 of a substance simply by its attributes, and no other- 
 wise. The attributes of bread, and the attributes of 
 flesh and blood, are perfectly well known ; and these 
 attributes are not only different from each other, but 
 they are mutually exclusive of each other. Of course 
 this would be acknowledged even by the Roman divines 
 themselves ; but, in order to explain the real presence of 
 the body and blood of Christ in the consecrated bread 
 and wine of the Eucharist, they not only distinguish, 
 but they attempt even to separate, the substance from 
 its accidents. It is, of course, conceivable that two 
 towers might have been built upon separate foundations. 
 One tower, for instance, might be at Dover, and the 
 other at Calais. It is just conceivable that the towers 
 themselves, remaining exactly as they were, their foun- 
 dations should be exchanged, so that the Dover tower 
 might have the Calais foundation, and the Calais tower the 
 
ON EITUAIilSM. 185 
 
 Dover foundation. Somewhat in the same way the Eoman 
 divines imagined that they could deal with the accidents 
 of the Eucharistic bread and wine and the body and 
 blood of Christ. It was perfectly obvious that, in respect 
 to the accidents, the body and blood of Christ did not 
 come into the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. If not only 
 the substance but the accidents of Christ's body had been 
 produced by the words of consecration, there would have 
 appeared upon the altar — nay, upon every altar in 
 Christendom — nay, more, even in the mouth of every 
 communicant — a grown-up living man, between five and 
 six feet high, with hair and eyes and teeth, and literal 
 flesh and bones, such as all grown-up men have. As 
 such a miracle as this was unquestionably never wrought 
 by any words of consecration, the Catholic divines tell us 
 the miracle is wrought, not upon the accidents, but upon 
 the substance of the bread and wine. The accidents of 
 bread and wine are certainly still discernible by the 
 senses ; while on the contrary, the accidents of the body 
 and blood of Christ certainly are not. But in fact, we 
 are assured, there is on the altar after consecration a 
 living, adult man, and the infinite God Himself, with the 
 weight, the chemical composition, the scent, the colour, 
 and the density of a little round piece of bread. 
 
 If this explanation satisfies anybody, well and good ; 
 and if it had been thought profane that the change of 
 substance should have been made immediately, and 
 by a single leap, it would have been quite possible to 
 assume that there were millions of intermediate transub- 
 stantiations. Why not, for instance, affirm (because 
 nobody could disprove it) that at the moment of uttering 
 the words, " This is my body," the substance of Christ 
 stands first of all under the accidents of an angel, then 
 
186 ON EITUALISM. 
 
 under those of a man, then, one after another, under those 
 of the nobler of the animals, and then, at last, under the 
 bread ? Or why not affirm that, while there are the 
 accidents only of bread and wine, there are the substances 
 both of bread and of Christ ? The absurdity of all these 
 explanations is that they are mere moonshine; and that, 
 while human language continues to exist, substance and 
 accidents may and must be distinguished, but never can 
 be separated. On the other hand, it is not simply the 
 explanation offered by the Koman Church that is foolish 
 and offensive ; the evil lies in the thing to be explained. 
 If in any way whatever the man Christ Jesus is so 
 present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, that 
 whoever or whatever eats the one eats also the other, 
 then the mode of explaining this astounding fact is a 
 matter of the most trifling importance. Indeed, not 
 only is the Communion Of&ce of the Church of England 
 independent of the doctrine of transubstantiation, but 
 so also is the Canon of the Mass. The Canon of the 
 Mass had been used many generations before the dogma 
 of transubstantiation was defined ; and even now nothing 
 short of a miracle of exegesis can make the two con- 
 sistent. " Offerimus prseclarae Majestati tuse de tuis 
 donis ac datis, hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam 
 immaculatam, Panem sanctum vitse seternae, et Calicem 
 salutis perpetuse. Supra quae propitio ac sereno vultu 
 respicere digneris; et aceepta habere, sicuti accepta 
 habere dignatus es munera pueri tui justi Abel, et 
 sacrificium patriarchse nostri Abrahffi, et quod tibi obtulit 
 summus sacerdos tuus Melchisedech, sanctum sacrificium 
 immaculatam hostiam." 
 
 It is difficult to perceive how these words, uttered 
 after the consecration, could be honestly used by those 
 
ON RITUALISM. 187 
 
 who believe that the sacrifice offered in the Eucharist is 
 the veiy body and blood of Jesus Christ Himself. Why, 
 indeed, compare the Son of God Himself to the offering 
 of Abel, or of Abraham, or of Melchizedek, when it has 
 been the constant teaching of the Catholic Church 
 that those sacrifices had been themselves accepted only 
 for the sake of this ? 
 
 Unhappily, however, all that the Anglican divines can 
 be persuaded to say is, that that explanation of the 
 real presence which is called transubstantiation, is not 
 the true explanation, but that on the other hand the 
 thing which transubstantiation is intended to explain 
 is itself a fact ; that the body and blood of Christ are 
 really present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist as 
 they are not present anywhere else, and as they were 
 not present there before the words of consecration. 
 Eidley, for instance, in his last examination, examined 
 by the Bishop of Lincoln, answers : " My Lord,* .... 
 both you and I agree herein, that in the sacrament is 
 the veiy true and natural body and blood of Christ, even 
 that which was born of the Virgin Mary, which ascended 
 into heaven, which sitteth on the right hand of God the 
 Father, which shall come from thence to judge the quick 
 and the dead ; only we differ in modo, in the way and 
 manner of being ; we confess all one thing to be in the 
 sacrament, and dissent in the manner of being there. 
 I, being fully by God's Word thereunto persuaded, con- 
 fess Christ's natural body to be in the sacrament indeed 
 by spirit and grace, because that whosoever receiveth 
 worthilj that bread and wine, receiveth effectuously 
 
 * " Works of Bishop Eidley " (Paxker Society's Edition), 
 pp. 273, 274. 
 
188 ON BITUALISM. 
 
 Christ's body, and drinketh His blood (that is, he is 
 made effectually partaker of His passion) ; and you make 
 a grosser kind of being, enclosing a natural, a lively, and 
 a moving body, under the shape and form of bread and 
 wine. Now, this difference considered, to the question 
 thus I answer : — that in the sacrament of the altar is the 
 natural body and blood of Christ vere et realiter, indeed 
 and really, for spiritually, by grace and efficacy ; for so 
 every worthy receiver receiveth the very true body of 
 Christ. But if you mean really and indeed, so that 
 thereby you would include a lively and a moveable body 
 under the forms of bread and wine, then, in that 
 sense, is not Christ's body in the sacrament really and 
 indeed. " 
 
 Again, the well-known words of Hooker affirm a 
 doctrine about the real presence against which there is 
 every objection, except such as are merely metaphysical, 
 which could be urged against either the Eoman or 
 Lutheran hypothesis. " Let it therefore be sufficient 
 for me, presenting myself at the Lord's table, to know 
 what there I receive from Him, without searching or 
 inquiring of the manner how Christ performeth His 
 promise ; let disputes and questions, enemies to piety, 
 abatements of true devotion, and hitherto in this cause 
 but over patiently heard, let them take their rest ; let 
 curious and sharp-witted men beat their heads about 
 what questions themselves will, the very letter of the 
 word of Christ giveth plain security that these mysteries 
 do as nails fasten us to His very cross ; that by them we 
 draw out as touching efficacy, force and virtue, even the 
 blood of His gored side ; in the wounds of our Eedeemer 
 we there dip our tongues, we are dyed red both within 
 and without, our hunger is satisfied and our thirst for 
 
ON RITUALISM. 189 
 
 ever quenched ; they are things wonderful which he 
 feeleth, great which he seeth, and unheard of which he 
 uttereth, whose soul is possessed of the Paschal Lamb, 
 and made joyful in the strength of this new wine ; this 
 bread hath in it more than the substance which our eyes 
 behold; this cup, hallowed with solemn benediction, 
 availeth to the endless life and welfare both of soul and 
 body, in that it serveth as well for a medicine to heal 
 our infirmities and purge our sins as for a sacrifice of 
 thanksgiving; with touching it sanctifieth, it enlighteneth 
 with belief, it truly conformeth us unto the image of 
 Jesus Christ ; what these elements are in themselves it 
 skilleth not, it is enough that to me which take them 
 they are the body and blood of Christ, His promise in 
 witness hereof sufficeth. His word He knoweth which 
 way to accomplish ; why should any cogitation possess 
 the mind of a faithful communicant but this ; my 
 God, Thou art true; my soul, thou art happy ?"* 
 
 All this sort of pious meditation would be exceedingly 
 reverent if it were in the least degree necessary ; but 
 why torture one's mind with any sense of mystery at all? 
 Nothing but the most explicit words could require any- 
 body to believe that, by the mere words of consecration, 
 any change whatever would be produced in the bread 
 and wine; but in fact, Jesus Christ does not say a single 
 syllable about consecration. According to St. Matthew 
 and St. Mark, He does not say a single word about the 
 repetition of the service. According to St. Luke and 
 St. Paul, He says, " Do this in remembrance of me." 
 What the thing they were to -do really was is open to 
 very much discussion. What is certainly plain is, that 
 
 * " Ecclesiastical Polity," v., Ixvii., 13. 
 
190 ON RITUALISM. 
 
 they were to eat the hread and drink the -wine. Con- 
 sidering what Christ had done in the Last Supper, they 
 were to take bread, bless it, and break it, and giye 
 thanks. But what single word of Scripture is there to 
 shut us up to the belief that what Christ intended was 
 really to give this command: — " I hereby empower you 
 to set apart men to be my priests, and I also give you 
 authority to appoint men to be your own successors and 
 to have the same power that you yourselves have ; in 
 order that there may be an apostolical succession of 
 priests through all time. I command each one of these 
 priests to consider himself my representative ; to take 
 bread, bless it, and break it, and say, exactly as if he 
 were myself, ' This is my body; ' and I promise that the 
 bread shall then become my body, and whoever eats it 
 shall eat me." There is nothing like this in the New 
 Testament, and there is nothing in the conduct of the 
 apostles to indicate that they believed it. And we 
 might have expected clear references to this mystic and 
 supernatural character of the supper more in the first 
 age than in any other, because the dogma and the 
 ceremony being quite new, and in many respects re- 
 pulsive both to Jews and to Gentiles, would be in great 
 danger of mistake or neglect. 
 
 But even if the actual body in which Jesus Christ 
 appeared among us could be made present even then it 
 would he idolatry to worship it. Surely Church history, 
 and especially the history of the Sacraments, has proved 
 the profound wisdom of Christ's words: — "It is 
 
 EXPEDIENT FOK YOU THAT I GO AWAY." 
 
 But what I wish to direct special attention to is the 
 fact that any doctrine of the real presence of Christ's 
 body in the consecrated hread — as distinguished from 
 
ON RITUALISM. 191 
 
 His presence through the whole Sacrament to the spirits 
 of the communicants — is perfectly certain to produce 
 eTery abomination and superstition which has grown 
 out of or generated the dogma of transubstantiation. 
 Already the author of The Christian Year adores the 
 Eucharist ; already there are in the Established Church 
 litanies and a "Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament; " 
 already there are Cautels for mass — Anglican mass — 
 which are as loathsome as they are absurd. Even the 
 Bishop of St. David's acknowledges that the Ritualists 
 have, not transgressed the orthodox boundaries of the 
 Reformed Church in the matter of transubstantiation ; 
 but it makes no difference whatever in practice. Tran- 
 substantiation is not necessary to superstition. 
 
 The Directorium Anglicanum is a choice specimen of 
 what may be done and taught within the Reformed and 
 Established Church. It has passed, in an expensive 
 form, through large editions ; and is regarded as a work 
 of no mean authority. This, then, and such as this, 
 may be believed, and taught and done, in any parish in 
 England — -for a while. Of course the Ritualists regard 
 the Consecration Prayer as " the Canon," and proceed 
 as follows : — 
 
 " The Canon. — This is so called because it has been laid down 
 as the rule or canon which is to be rigidly followed by the priest 
 who offers the Holy Sacrifice. The Prayer of Consecration — 
 containing the Commemoration of the Passion, the Invocation, 
 and the Consecration Proper, i.e., the Words of Institution. 
 
 " The celebrant does just what Christ did; as near as we can 
 imitate His action. He takes, when he says, ' He took ; ' and 
 presents to God the element ; he breaks, when he says, ' He 
 brake it,' and designs it to reception by laying his hand upon it, 
 and in a manner imparts it when he says, Our Lord gave it, 
 saying, ' Take, eat,' etc. ; and he makes it the body of Christ by 
 the words of consecration, ' Hoc est corpus meum.' " — p. 72. 
 
192 ON EITUALISM. 
 
 " Some of the Englisli clergy say the following before the 
 Prayer of Consecration, in secret : — ' Most merciful God, look gra- 
 ciously upon the gifts now lying before Thee, and send down Thy 
 Holt Spikit upon this Sacrifice, that He may make this bread 
 the body of Thy Cheist, and this cup the blood of Thy Chbist ; 
 and that all who are partakers thereof may obtain remission of 
 their sins, be confirmed in godliness, and be filled with Thy 
 Holy Spirit. Amen.' But the English (as the Roman) Church 
 holds, that the words of Institution are sufficient for the conse- 
 cration, as may be gathered from the rubric concerning the con- 
 secration of further bread and wine. 
 
 " Though it be true that God the Father efiects the consecra- 
 tion of the elements by the operation of God the Holy Ghost, it 
 is unnecessary to pray expressly for the Holy Ghost to con- 
 secrate the elements of bread and wine, because God knows 
 perfectly all that is necessary for a vahd consecration." — p. 74. 
 
 " The celebrant at the Consecration Prayer inclines humbly, 
 extensis manibus. Before the recital of the Words of Institution 
 the celebrant should remove the pall from the chalice. At the 
 words ' body ' and ' blood,' he should make a cross over the 
 elements. At the words 'Who, in the same night,' he should 
 rest his elbows on the altar, bowing down. The paten and also 
 the chalice are held in the left hand ; the sign of the cross being 
 made with the right hand. After the words, 'This is my body, 
 which is given for you,' the 'hostia' should be placed on the 
 paten, and the celebrant with laig assistants should reverently 
 genuflect. Then, rising, the celebrant should at once elevate it 
 with the first finger and thumb of both hands, for the worship of 
 the faithful, while he is saying, ' Do this in remembrance of me.' 
 After the words, ' This is my blood of the New Testament,' he 
 should place the chaUoe on the centre of the corporal, and with 
 his assistants genuflect again; after which he should in like 
 manner elevate the chalice with both hands while he is saying, 
 ' Do this as oft as ye shall drink of it in remembrance of me.' 
 After the consecration, the celebrant wiU keep the fingers and 
 thumbs of each hand joined until after the ablutions. The lay- 
 assistants at the altar, and members of the choir, should be 
 instructed to bow profoundly at the consecration and elevation. 
 
 " After the Consecration Prayer it is most desirable that no 
 person passes before the blessed Sacrament, without genuflecting, 
 bowing, or some token of reverence." — pp. 76, 77. (Third Edition) . 
 
ON KITDALISM. 193 
 
 " Pbeces Secret^e may be said by the celebrant standing 
 humbly before the midst of the altar. The following are strongly 
 recommended. (Uo) Missali Sarum.) They should be written 
 out plainly, printed or illuminated : — • 
 
 " DiCENDiE POST CONSEORATIONEM. 
 
 " Unde et memores, Domine, nos servi Tui, sed et plebs Tua 
 sancta, ejusdem Christi filii Tui Domini Dei nostri tam beatae 
 Passionis, necnon et ab inferis Besurrectionis, sed et in coelos 
 gloriosae Ascensionis, ofFerimus prseclarse Majestati Tuse de Tuis 
 donis ao datis, Hostiam pu + ram, Hostiam sane + tam, Hos- 
 tiam imma + culatam : Panem sane + turn vitse seternas, et 
 Call + cem salutis perpetuse. 
 
 " Supra quae propitio ac sereno vultu respicere digneris ; et 
 accepta habere, sicuti accepta habere dignatus es munera pueri 
 Tui justi Abel, et sacrificium Patriarchaa nostri Abrahse : et 
 quod Tibi obtulit summxis sacerdos Tuus Melchisedecli, sanctum 
 sacriiicium, immaculatam Hostiam. Supplices Te rogamus Om- 
 nipotens Deus ; jube hsec perferri per manus sancti Angeli Tui 
 in sublin;e altare Tuum, in conspectu Divinse Majestatis Tuse : 
 ut quotquot ex hac altaris participatione, sacrosanctum Filii Tui 
 Cor + pus et San + guinem sumpserimus : omni bene + diotione 
 coelesti gratia repleamur. Per eundem Christum Dominum 
 nostrum. Amen. Memento etiam, Domine animarum famu- 
 lorum famnlarumque Tuarum (N. et N.) qui nos prsecesserunt 
 cum signo fidei, et dormiunt in somno pacis : ipsis Domine, et 
 omnibus in Christo quiescentibus, locum refrigerii, lucis et pacis, 
 ut indulgeas, deprecamur. Per eundem Christum Dominum 
 nostrum. Amen. 
 
 "Nobis quoque peccatoribus famulis Tuis de multitudine 
 miserationum Tuarum sperantibus, partem aliquam et societatem 
 donare digneris cum Tuis Sanctis Apostolis et Martyribus : cum 
 Joanne, Stephano, Matthia, Bamaba, Ignatio, Alexandre, Mar- 
 ceUino, Petro, Felicitate, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucia, Agnete, 
 Csecilia, Anastatia, et cum omnibus Sanctis Tuis : intra quorum 
 nos consortium non estimator meriti, sed vem», qusssumus, lar- 
 gitor admitte. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Per quern 
 "haec omnia Domine, semper bona creas, sancti + iicas, vivi + iicas, 
 bene + dicis, et prsestas nobis. Per ip + sum, et cum ip + so, et 
 in ip + so est Tibi Deo Patri Omnipo + tenti, unitate Spiritus + 
 Sancti omnis honor et gloria. Per omnia ssecula sseculorum. 
 Amen. 
 
 
 
194 
 
 ON RITUALISM. 
 
 " The above should be said with no pauses nor delays ; imme- 
 diately after the elevation : so that not too much time be taken 
 up, nor the service too considerably lengthened."- — pp. 78, 79. 
 
 " The communicants should be careful to kneel where they are 
 instructed to kneel, and should hold the head and body erect. 
 It is obviously impossible to communicate people who put their 
 faces on the floor, or who kneel off and away from the kneeling 
 cushions, without the greatest danger to the blessed Sacrament, 
 and the most painful and singular inconvenience to the clergy." * 
 
 Such are the new Rubrics, the interpolated and secret 
 prayers, which are meant to fit, and do fit, the AngHcau 
 dogma of the real presence. But lest we should 
 possibly miss the grossly carnal character of this 
 doctrine, we have the foUoTOUg " Cautels of the 
 Mass:"— 
 
 " The seventh Cautel is, that before mass the priest do not 
 wash his mouth or teeth, but only his lips from without with liis 
 mouth closed as he has need, lest perchance he should inter- 
 mingle the taste of water with his saliva. After mass also he 
 should beware of expectorations as much as possible, until he 
 shall have eaten and drunken, lest by chance anything shall have 
 remained between his teeth or in his fauces, wliich, by expect- 
 orating, he might eject." — p. 109. 
 
 " Also : if a fly or spider or any such thing should fall into the 
 chaUoe before consecration, or even if the priest shall apprehend 
 that poison hath been put in, the wine which is in the chalice 
 ought to be poured out, and the chalice ought to be washed, and 
 other ydae with water put therein to be consecrated. But if any 
 of these (contingencies) befaU after the consecration, the fly or 
 spider or such like thing should be warily taken, oftentimes 
 diligently washed between the fingers, and should then be burnt, 
 and the ablution, together with the burnt ashes, must be put in 
 the pisciaa. But the poison ought by no means to be taken, but 
 such blood with which poison has been mingled should be 
 reserved in a comely vessel, together with the relics." — p. 113. 
 
 " If the Eucharist hath fallen to the ground, the place where it 
 
 * JDireotorium Anglicanum, p. 81. 
 
ON RITUALISM. 195 
 
 lay must be scraped, and fire Mndled thereon, and the ashes 
 reserved beside the altar." — p. 114. 
 
 " Also : if any one, by any accident, of the throat, vomit up the 
 Eucharist, the vomit ought to be burned, and the ashes ought to 
 be reserved near the altar. And if it shall be a cleric, monk, 
 presbyter, or deacon, he must do penance for forty days, a bishop 
 seventy days, a laic thirtj'. But if he vomits from infirmity, he 
 must do penance for five days. But who does not keep the 
 Sacrament well, so that a mouse or other animal devour it, he 
 must do penance forty days."— p. 115; 
 
 It might indeed be objected that, even gi-anting the 
 real presence in the consecrated elements, it can 
 scarcely be necessary for the priesthood to treat the 
 body of Christ as if it were a little doll. But apart 
 from the mere frivolousness of the ceremonials and 
 Cautels of the Mass, what possible objection can, by any 
 Anglican, be taken to them ? If Jesus Christ, soul and 
 body, flesh, blood, and divinity, is really and objectively 
 present irt a bit of bread, there is certainly every reason 
 why the bit of bread should be taken care of. It is 
 certain that in that case the Christ could be as com- 
 pletely eaten by a mouse as by a human being ; and a 
 fly might sip — and after all why not ? — the blood that 
 redeemed the world. If the wafer be Christ, then, like 
 all other food, it is subject when eatfen to the processes 
 of digestion, assimilation, and excretion ; and in spite 
 of all the care the massing priest may take, innumerable 
 Christs must have already found their way into the 
 piscina — and who will tell us what becomes of them 
 then? 
 
 I ought not perhaps, after all, to call this doctrine 
 blasphemous. It is rather "a fond thing," and utterly 
 unproveable. It only puts into a very gross form what 
 multitudes of people believe about the omnipresence of 
 
 2 
 
196 ON RITUALISM. 
 
 God. The blasphemy, the dishonour done to God's 
 character, lies in the theory which alone could justify 
 any doctrine whatever of the real presence ; for any 
 such doctrine implies not so much that the incarnation 
 exalted humanity to God, but rather that it turned the 
 Eternal Word Himself into a mere thing that could be 
 eaten and digested. It implies that Almighty God, who 
 gaye men reason and intellect, and bodily senses, can 
 find a sort of pleasure in tantalizing His own creatures, 
 and rendering His own gifts worthless. Our senses are 
 to lead us astray, our intellects are to be continually 
 curbed, thwarted, and contradicted, and we are to 
 suppose that the great merit of trusting God must arise 
 out of the total absence of every reason for confiding in 
 Him. It implies, moreover, a doctrine of sacrifice 
 which, when applied even to the one offering of Christ 
 upon the cross, is heathenish ; and when applied to the 
 perpetual sacrifices of the mass, reduces the whole 
 doctrine of the atonement to an absurdity. 
 
 English people outside the ranks of the clergy have 
 almost forgotten this real presence. Having been dis- 
 tinctly assured in their own Communion Office that by 
 kneeling at the Lord's Supper " no adoration is intended, 
 or ought to be done, either unto the sacramental bread 
 or wine there bodily received, or unto any corporal 
 presence of Christ's natural flesh and blood," they have 
 gone on believing that Christ's body was in heaven, and 
 that nothing but bread and wine was on God's board. 
 Because in the absence of all outward forms of homage, 
 men had almost been delivered from the mischievous 
 superstition of worshipping what their own hands had 
 made, therefore have the Eitualists restored the forms 
 that they may bring back the idolatry. It is the doctrine 
 
ON RITUALISM. 197 
 
 of the real presence far more than the ceremonial of 
 the mass which at heart they care for. And persistence 
 in the ceremonial for a single generation will do far 
 more to bring back Popish superstitions than all the 
 books of dry argument that were ever written. 
 
 Of course the restoration of the mass is inseparable 
 from a certain theory of the nature and necessity of a 
 priesthood, and of apostolical succession. That theory 
 belongs not to the Eoman Church only ; it is a natural 
 product of human frailty. The experiment of applying 
 it to practice has indeed been tried with so appalling a 
 completeness in the Roman Church, that it can no 
 longer be doubtful what priestcraft is, and what priest- 
 craft will do. But men so much prefer to be under 
 authority, to serve God by deputy, and even in self-abase- 
 ment to prostrate themselves in the deepest degradation, 
 that they are continually condoning all the oifences of 
 priests, and persuading themselves that the gigantic 
 tyranny by which not only individual souls but whole 
 nations have been oppressed was the not inevitable 
 abuse of necessary and beneficial powers. No mistake 
 can be greater and more fatal. It is unquestionably the 
 inevitable effect of powers that are not only unnecessary 
 but malignant. A consistent priest cannot help being a 
 tyrant, and in a generation or two priests become not 
 only tyrants but demoralized ; .they become cruel, or 
 crafty, or both. It should be then distinctly understood 
 that the great lesson which Ritualism is teaching to 
 English men and women, boys and girls, is the necessity 
 of the priest. Only the priest can administer those 
 sacraments which are essential means of grace, and 
 pronounce that absolution which is the loosing of sin. 
 Only priests can teach the Church authoritatively what 
 
198 ON EITUALISM. 
 
 is the truth of God, and safely guide them in the way of 
 life. What then can be the use of free discussion ? 
 We may argue till doomsday, and we can only arrive at 
 one or other of two conclusions — either at the doctrine 
 that the priest approves, or at the doctrine he does not 
 approve. If the latter, we are wrong, and must give up 
 our own opinions or be damned. If the former, argu- 
 ment was wholly useless. How can Churchmen, for 
 instance, be hesitating about such a matter as the 
 " Conscience Clause "? Can an uninspired layman have 
 a mind of his own on such a matter as the proper 
 education of the young? Is he to say to a divinely 
 authorized instructor. Because the parents of these 
 little children choose to live in heresy and schism, you 
 must let them alone, and abstain from teaching them 
 the saving doctrines of the Church ? Nay, if this 
 doctrine of the priesthood is once more to be dominant 
 in England, mortal sins such as heresy and schism will 
 no longer be tolerated. Not only will the souls of the 
 little children be snatched as brands from the burning, 
 but the bodies of their heretical and schismatical 
 parents would be flung in. Are not kings and legis- 
 lators, members of parliament and their constituents, 
 alike bound to sit as humble disciples at the feet of 
 those whom Jesus Christ has sent into the world to be 
 His representatives ? Is it not therefore plain that the 
 civil law must always follow the ecclesiastical law, and 
 the nation become the bond slave of the Church ? The 
 power to administer sacraments implies also the power 
 of refusing to administer them ; the power of absolving 
 implies the power of retaining sins ; the power to bless 
 implies the power to excommunicate. It is perfectly 
 certain which of these powers would be most exercised 
 
ON EITXIALISM. 199 
 
 if priests had their own way. The comparative harm- 
 lessness of the priest in this country, and even in this 
 age, arises from the fact that there are some millions of 
 educated men and women in Europe who i-egard his 
 claims with supreme contempt, and would just as soon 
 have a priest's curse as his blessing. 
 
 The relation of this movement to the law of England 
 is still extremely uncertain. Judicial decisions by the 
 supreme court are as yet few and unimportant, and the 
 opinions of counsel, even the most eminent, are very 
 conflicting. The Liturgy, Articles, and Homilies are 
 so mutually inconsistent, that it is impossible to know 
 how much of Eitualism is legal and how much- is 
 illegal. But this very fact is excessively demoralizing. 
 First, because everybody knows that a decision might 
 quite easily be obtained. The bishops are some of them 
 in favour of the movement ; and not one of them has 
 the courage to bring the matter to an issue. It is 
 simply absurd to pretend that the costliness of ecclesias- 
 tical procedure is a sufiicient excuse for inaction. A 
 single letter from the Bishop of London published in 
 The Times newspaper would be certain to secure, before 
 the end of a week, a fund which would be sufiicient to 
 obtain a judicial decision of every disputed point. But 
 the fact is, a settlement is not wished, but dreaded. It 
 could scarcely fail to split the Church ^n pieces, and 
 probably to dis-establish religion altogether. The 
 Bishop of Gloucester talks, with a piety that might with 
 advantage be less oily, of the great blessing of unity, and 
 the singular mercy of God, which, at the time of the 
 Gorham controversy, preserved " Our Beloved Church " 
 from schisni. Can any man of ordinaiy discernment 
 fail to perceive in what way the Church was preserved 
 
200 ON RITUALISM. 
 
 from schism ? It was preserved from scliism by being 
 robbed of dogma, and many people would- eagerly add, 
 by being robbed also of common honesty. Was any real 
 wound in the Anglican Church healed, any doubt set 
 at rest, any truth of God affirmed, any fatal error 
 anathematized and cast out? Nothing of the sort. 
 The Church of England simply said, " My beloyed 
 children, I don't know anything whatever about baptism. 
 I don't know whether it regenerates a child or does not. 
 I don't know whether it is necessary to salvation or not, 
 and I wish to goodness you would not bother me about 
 any such trifle. Just preach whatever you like on the 
 subject. The rector can say that baptism is necessary 
 to salvation in the morning, and the curate can say that 
 it is not in the afternoon ; it doesn't make a bit of 
 difference, and you are very stupid children to be making 
 a fuss in the family about any such trifle." 
 
 That is what the Bishop of Gloucester unctuously 
 calls "' God in His great mercy preserving the unity of 
 the Church." In the judgment of almost all impartial 
 observers, the Gorham compromise was neither more nor 
 less than a foul blot upon the honour of the English 
 Church. There was not a single sect in this country 
 which failed to perceive its true character, and to regard 
 it with undisguised contempt. The Church of England 
 was established by law in order that its dogmas might be 
 fixed, and that the conduct of public worship might be 
 delivered from the caprices of individuals, and subject 
 to the control of a recognized authority. It is a public 
 scandal that, in a Church established by law, the law 
 should be utterly uncertain, and that both dogma and 
 ritual should be in such hopeless confusion that amid 
 much that is uncertain one thing alone seems certain, — 
 
ON EITUALISM. 201 
 
 that at least a full half of the clergy must be, whether 
 they intend it or not, breaking the laws of their country, 
 and abusing the souls of their people. 
 
 That this unfixedness of ecclesiastical law has, to 
 a certain extent, been serviceable to freedom it is 
 impossible to deny ; but freedom could have been far 
 better served in another way, and one which at the same 
 time would have strengthened common honesty. The 
 fact is that there never, at any single ' moment of time, 
 was one valid reason why any particular form of 
 Protestant dogma and worship should be established by 
 law rather than another. From the time of Henry 
 Vm.'s quarrel with the Pope to this present moment, 
 the Church of England has been in a perpetual flux — 
 never being but always becoming. Until the death of 
 Henry it was in doctrine unreformed, and the change 
 which it had undergone was almost exclusively political. 
 Edward VI. and his advisers were far too Protestant for 
 the people, and when Mary came to the throne the old 
 creed and the old ritual were more than tolerated by the 
 great bulk of the nation. In the reign of Elizabeth, 
 what called itself the Church of England was opposed 
 by a powerful Eomanist faction on the one side, and by 
 the discontent and stubborn energy of the Puritans on 
 the other. During the Stuart period, not to mention its 
 temporary destruction, there were all manner of con- 
 ferences for the sake of effecting a compromise between 
 opposing parties, and modifying both the creed and the 
 ritual. There were two different, very different. Prayer 
 Books set forth by authority in the reign of Edward VI., 
 and another by Elizabeth, and again by Charles II. ; 
 and at this very moment there is not a siagle human 
 being in the whole world who knows exactly what the 
 
202 ON RITUALISM. 
 
 Anglican formularies mean. In those days there was a 
 mad desire in everybody to settle everything. Lutherans, 
 Zwinglians, Calvinists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, though 
 but yesterday they had all broken loose from the 
 mightiest and oldest Church in Christendom, were all so 
 satisfied of their own complete soundness, that they 
 wanted their own little set of dogmas and ceremonies to 
 be set forth by authority and guaranteed till the day of 
 judgment. Yet even they themselves were changing 
 every hour, and their descendants have been changing 
 ever since. There is surely nothing to despise in this 
 restlessness of the human mind, this eager pursuit of 
 what is higher, and truer and better. But what infatu- 
 ation is it that leads men' to imagine that, if it were 
 only possible, it would be the highest virtue and the 
 most far-reaching expediency to imprison the free spirit ? 
 I must compress into a very brief space what I have 
 yet to say in this essay about the Ritualists and 
 Eitualism. There is scarcely anything dogmatic to 
 distinguish them from Roman Catholics ; and they also, 
 like the Romanists, profess allegiance to authority, and 
 affect to despise what they call liberty of conscience. 
 But the Romanists can see quite plainly that though the 
 Anglo-Catholics rest upon authority it is an authority of 
 their own determining. They determine for them- 
 selves, according to their own private judgment, which 
 popes and councils are infallible, and which canons 
 and decrees are binding upon their consciences. They 
 accept both dogma and ceremonial at some one parti- 
 cular point of their own choosing, and refuse to move 
 on further along the course of ecclesiastical develop- 
 ment. Therefore they are schismatical, infected with « 
 the fatal vice of private judgment ; and even Dr. Pusey's 
 
ON RITUALISM. 203 
 
 Eirenicon — is not its title written in the index of for- 
 bidJen books ? 
 
 In relation to tbe Bible, they accept it as an authority, 
 but not as the authority : as at first it needed for its own 
 canonical authority, so it needs now for its true inter- 
 pretation and right use, the authority of the Church. 
 
 In the state and in society Ritualism is the signal for 
 revolution. It is surely impossible that the great mass 
 of Englishmen should ever again believe the dogmas 
 upon which priestcraft and. Ritualism are based ; but 
 their disbelief, and that only, will save us from the old 
 tyrannies. Even now the influence of hateful dogmas 
 is widely felt ; the old bitterness of religious controversy 
 is becoming again intensified. Again, " Dissenters" — 
 which, at any rate, means men who are honest enough 
 to leave a church whose laws they do not know, and 
 therefore cannot obey — are abused as heretics, as men 
 infected with a contagious leprosy of soul-destroying 
 error. Priests are again sowing discord in families, 
 and trying to undo the charities which have thus far 
 'survived ecclesiastical intolerance. Even clergymen who 
 are not Ritualist are unable, in some districts, to open 
 schools or seek for pupils with any reasonable hope of 
 success. Petty persecutions of all kinds are freely 
 employed. The priests are taking possession of us, as 
 if the Lord had delivered us into their hands for a prey.' 
 They demand our souls and bodies, our wives and 
 children, our lives and liberties, " in the name of the 
 Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." 
 
 It is quite impossible to-over-estimate the importance 
 of this crisis, or to search too earnestly for the cure of 
 the mischief. Nothing can justify mere lawlessness, 
 so long as a nation is fairly represented and makes its 
 
204 ON RITUALISM. 
 
 own laws. The riots at St. George's-in-tlie-East pro- 
 bably helped what tbey were meant to destroy. But it 
 would be a sight not without its moral grandeur, if 
 some stern old prophet would burn men's bones upon 
 these altars of abomination, trample under foot the 
 conjured bread, and pour out the wine-blood like water. 
 Let all equal rights be conceded eyen to those who are 
 undermining the liberties of England, but not a single 
 privilege : let it be remembered that they are the 
 enemies of the commonwealth, and that our defences, 
 whatever may be our foe, are only weakened by their 
 alliance. 
 
 The one cure for Kitualism is Rationalism — by which 
 I mean, not a set of results but a method. The priests 
 must be made to prove their priesthood ; and gorgeous 
 ceremonial must justify itself, or depart elsewhither. 
 Perfectly free inquiry will cut up all this mischief 
 by the roots, and nothing short of perfect freedom. 
 Rationalism may lead us to Rome or to Geneva ; but, 
 at any rate, let us know where we are going and why 
 we choose that road. Faith does not mean " taking 
 anything whatever for gi-anted." A man may believe 
 whatever he likes, if he will look only to one set of facts, 
 and he may give to his ignorant prejudice the name 
 of faith. At the end of all inquiry, all observation 
 and introspection, there will still remain great divine 
 mysteries, facts which are the substance of all phceno- 
 mena, truths which can be resolved into no simpler 
 truths. But apart from these, we shall never get rid 
 of pestilent superstitions and debasing lies until we 
 reverse the dictum of St. Augustine, and give ourselves 
 the trouble "to know in order that we may believe." 
 
EOMANISM, ANGLICANISM, 
 
 AND 
 
 EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICiL * 
 
 Few modern religious "movements" are more bewilder- 
 ing to a thoughtful observer than the manifestly earnest 
 desire and effort to bring about a union between Eoman 
 Greek, and Anglican " Churches." This endeavour has 
 met with so overwhelming a ridicule on the one hand, 
 and with so 'complete a demonstration of its hopelessness 
 on the other hand, that we have almost lost sight of a 
 further consideration, more important perhaps, and 
 scarcely less obvious, than any other, — the fact that all 
 this effort of speech and act is wholly superfluous. 
 There is really nothing to unite, because there is no real 
 and substantial difference. Each of these Churches is 
 built upon the very same foundation, sets out from the 
 very same hypotheses, and can never destroy either of 
 the others without, in the very same act, committing 
 suicide. Each of them is a bulwark to the rest ; and 
 the destruction of any one of the three could scarcely fail 
 to be accompanied, or speedily followed, by the ruin of 
 the other two. 'And the same is true of the system 
 which calls itself " Evangelical ; " even though it seems 
 
 * From the " Fortnightly Review," June 15th, 1866. 
 
206 EOMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 now to exist almost solely for tlie sake of protesting against 
 Romanism and Anglicanism. Perhaps the four great 
 parties may not inaptly be compared to the Paul, the 
 Apollos, the Cephas, and the Christ parties in the early 
 Corinthian Church : and, like those early schisms, they 
 all grow from the same root, and tend to the same 
 results. This is, then, the proposition which it is the 
 object of this essay to prove, omitting only the detailed 
 and separate consideration of the Greek Church, as being 
 in this country too little known to be cared for, and 
 moreover sufiiciently included in whatever may be proved 
 of the Church of Eome. 
 
 This identity of principle and foundation, in spite of 
 the highly coloured superficial differences of the three 
 great rivals who claim the faith and obedience of English 
 Christians, is not obscurely indicated by the relation which 
 they all alike sustain to the spirit of free inquiry ; that 
 spirit which, at the present moment, is actually working 
 out a reformation far deeper, and likely to spread far wider, 
 and last far longer, than that which was accomplished in 
 England under the Tudors. For the reformation of the 
 nineteenth century is real and not merely formal, in 
 principles not merely in details, in the very root and 
 foundation of religious doctrine and ecclesiastical polity. 
 It is a protest, not against any particular sentence, but 
 against the jurisdiction of the court ; not against some 
 special law, but against the legislature itself ; not against 
 individual dogmas, but against the principle of any 
 external authority by which dogma may be defined and 
 enforced. It has done, or is doing, that for the intellect 
 which Luther did for the conscience and the aifections. 
 The one vindicated for all men the right to approach the 
 All-righteous even without the priest, and left for the 
 
EYANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 207 
 
 minister of Christ no higher office than " to declare and 
 pronounce to God's people the absolution and remission 
 of their sins." The other is vindicating for all men the 
 right to come face to face with truth without the creeds ; 
 and leaves for the creeds no greater worth than to he the 
 records of earnest inquiry and strong conviction, the 
 landmarks of old beliefs. Thus the earlier Eeformation 
 is absorbed by the later. For the right of free search 
 for truth, and of open discussion, must include the right 
 to examine and test the value, not only of creeds, but a, 
 fortiori, of priesthoods and rituals. And each of the three 
 great English religious parties is keenly sensitive to the 
 fact that the new reformation is fatal alike to Eomanism, 
 Anglicanism, and Evangelicalism. Therefore do Herod 
 and Pontius Pilate for the occasion become friends, in 
 order that they may defend their common fundamental 
 principles. For in sight of the spirit of free inquiry 
 and bold unfettered utterance, all the superficial diifer- 
 ences which separate Dr. McNeile from Dr. Pusey, and, 
 both from Dr. Manning, are, notwithstanding their gay 
 and flaunting colours, mere geometrical surfaces, having 
 length and breadth but no thickness. 
 
 The superficial differences which distinguish Evan- 
 gelicalism from Romanism are, of course, far more 
 obtrusive than those by which Eomanism is distinguished 
 from Anglicanism. Indeed, it has been the constant 
 cry of the Evangelicals, both within and without the 
 Establishment, that there really does exist between 
 Anglicanism and Eomanism that very identity which it 
 is the object of this paper to prove. This assertion, 
 though in itself perfectly true, has often been made in a 
 form vAich was not only insufferably impertinent and 
 scandalously uncharitable, but demonstrably false. For 
 
208 ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 the Evangelicals have been long in the habit of affirming 
 not only that Anglicanism and Eomanism are in principle 
 identical, but that all Papists and Anglicans know and 
 realize the identity. Hence, they have had no hesitation 
 in charging the distinguished leaders of what is called 
 the High Church party in the Establishment, with some 
 of the very meanest vices with which human nature can be 
 debased, — with the most contemptible moral cowardice, 
 with the shabbiest trickery, with habitual perjury, and 
 with such a use of the temporalities of the Established 
 Church as can scarcely be distinguished even in law, 
 and cannot at all be distinguished in foro conscientice, 
 from positive robbery. And on the other hand they 
 have not hesitated to charge the most influential of 
 English Catholics, among whom are to be found some 
 who have given this proof of their perfect integrity — 
 namely, that they have willingly abandoned their 
 Anglican dignities and emoluments for the sake of what 
 they believe to be true — with conniving at, and even 
 actively encouraging, that very baseness with which the 
 High Church party in the Establishment is charged. 
 Now these grave accusations are not only impudently 
 false, but they are obviously and transparently false ; 
 the crimes of which these good men are accused are 
 crimes by which nothing whatever could be gained, and 
 which, moreover, have been distinctly repudiated and 
 disproved over and over again. The High Church party 
 in the Established Church has probably lost even in 
 money, by its High Churchism, very much more than it 
 can possibly have gained ; and, moi-eover, it has had to 
 sacrifice what, to a man of high principle and brotherly 
 love, is far more important than money, the goodwill of 
 friends, and the reputation of an unsullied honour. On 
 
EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 209 
 
 the other hand, the Eoman Catholic clergy either deny 
 the identity between Eomanism and Anglicanism, affirm- 
 ing that the two are totally distinct, that no union can 
 possibly take place between them ; or they affirm the 
 identity in principle, and therefore regard the heresy and 
 schism, the imperfect hierarchy, and dwarfed ceremonial 
 of the English Church, as a preposterous absurdity. 
 
 Even that which to a superficial observer seems most 
 closely to identify the Roman and the Anglican Churches, 
 and which is in fact a sort of instinctive endeavour to 
 arrive at an identity, not only in premisses but in con- 
 clusions, is understood at once by any intelligent Catholic 
 to be a silly and even a mischievous delusion. Anglican 
 ritualists vainly dream that they are permitted to wear 
 their gay clothes, and to decorate and incense their altars, 
 and to depart by all manner of ceremonial extravagances 
 from the simple rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer, 
 because the English people are beginning more com- 
 pletely to understand, and more thoroughly to approve 
 the things signified, of which all these elaborate 
 ceremonies are the signs. This delusion, moreover, 
 seems to be fostered by the undeniable fact that even 
 among the strictest Puritan sects there is an increasing 
 willingness to abandon the old baldness of -their 
 religious services, and the dreary ugliness of their old 
 meeting-houses. But any Dissenter and any Catholic 
 could tell a High Churchman in a single sentence how 
 all this has come to pass : it has come to pass, not 
 because Englishmen care more than they used to do 
 about Ritualism, but because they have ceased to care 
 about ' it at all. They regard all these ceremonial 
 extravagances as a mere amusement, probably silly, 
 frequently mischievous, but never of suf&cient importance 
 
 p 
 
210 EOMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 to require more than a laugh or a sneer. If Dissenters 
 imagined — as they certainly do not and have no need to 
 imagine — that building their chapels in the form of a 
 cross, or placing their communion tables altar-wise in 
 a chancel at the east end, meant anything ; if, for in- 
 stance, they imagined that a cruciform church implied 
 that there was any mystic virtue in the form of a cross, 
 or that a communion table set up against the east wall 
 indicated that a special sacrifice was offered to God in 
 the Holy Communion, every Gothic dissenting chapel 
 would be torn down before a month had passed away. 
 
 Nor are Catholic divines in even the slightest uncer- 
 tainty about this same fact. 
 
 " I am perfectly aware,'' says the Very Rev. Frederick Oakley, 
 "that there has been a great development of Ritual in the 
 Anglican Communion, and, what is far better, of self-denying 
 charity in forms and ways peculiarly Catholic. The latter is a 
 circumstance full of hope and promise, of the former I wiU speak 
 hereafter. I know, also, especially from Dr. Pusey's work, as far 
 as the shortness of the period during which it has been in 
 circulation can enable me to judge on the point, that there is a 
 marvellous advance in the liberty of utterance on doctrinal sub- 
 jects, and in the public toleration of what are called extreme 
 opinions. But I cannot consent to regard this fact as creditable 
 to the Anglican Church, merely because it happens in this instance 
 to tell on our side. It is impossible to shut one's eyes to the fact 
 that the bishops allow Dr. Pusey and his friends to run out in one 
 line because they wish to secure an indemnity for Rationahsts, 
 Liberals, and Evangelicals in another. . . . The start which has 
 been made during the last few years in the direction of ceremenial 
 religion, apart from any corresponding advances in sensitiveness 
 to the necessity of an ordained provision for dogmatic teaching, 
 appears to me to be not only not a gain, but a distinct and con- 
 spicuous evil. It can have no other effect than to amuse with 
 mere baubles a number of good men, who mistake the form for 
 the substance. The rites and ceremonies of religion are not only 
 most beautiful in themselves, but react powerfully upon its 
 
EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 211 
 
 truths, when they are the natural expressions of those truths, and 
 are so understood by those who witness them ; but they can no 
 more teach religion of themselves, or be a substitute for it, than 
 the emblazoned pall which covers the corpse of a monarch 
 sustain the idea of a living royalty. I do not, indeed, deny that 
 these mimicries of CathoUc ceremonials may do us a service in 
 familiarising the minds of Englishmen with a type of worship 
 which had been totally obliterated ; but this is a very different 
 thing from saying they represent a reality where they are, or can 
 be otherwise than most injurious to those who delight in them, 
 by leading them to confound the outward show with the true 
 spu-it of Catholicity. But even this is scarcely their worst result. 
 They cannot be practised without entailing a system of equivoca- 
 tion aud compromise highly prejudicial to the moral sense. The 
 only legitimate interpreter of doubtful Rubrics is the Ordinary ; 
 and it certainly cannot be said either that the Rubrics on which 
 these practices are founded are clearly in their favour, or that an 
 explanation of their ambiguities is usually sought from the living 
 " authority. Hence a considerable body of the clergy are con- 
 stantly seeking to hoodwink their bishops, who are themselves 
 not very impatient of the process, and thus the Catholic principles 
 ot authority and obedience find their counterpart in a mutual 
 relation of connivance and evasion." * 
 
 The recent alliance between the Evangelical party 
 and the High Church party is the more significant 
 because the Evangelicals apparently believe that the 
 High Church party in the Establishment are no better 
 in creed, and are much worse in honesty, than the Papists 
 themselves. On the other hand, the High Church 
 party appear often to regard the Evangelicals, apart from 
 the mystic effect of sacraments and orders, with the 
 same sort of aversion which they seem to feel for Ana- 
 baptists and Unitarians. And yet, in spite of these 
 obtrusive, superficial differences, and strong antipathies, 
 
 * " Leading Topics of Dr. Pusey's Recent Work reviewed," 
 
 pp. 7, 10, 11. 
 
 p2 
 
212 ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 even Dr. Pusey and the Evangelicals have found it 
 necessary to combine — not by any means against the 
 devil and all his v^orks, and the pomps and vanities of 
 this wicked world, but against the Bishop of Natal and 
 the authors of "Essays and Reviews." In other words, 
 they combined against free inquiry, against the liberty 
 to " know, to utter, and to argue freely." They com- 
 bined by the mere instinct of self-preservation against 
 what each and all of them knew to be a common foe 
 — an enemy not simply to ritual extravagance, or pious 
 fanaticism, or dogmatic absurdity ; but to the right and 
 power of any individual, or any church, or any book, to 
 determine for all time what should be the course of 
 human duty and the bounds of human belief. To 
 employ that mystic and inflated language which is so 
 often used in a subject of this kind, it may be said that 
 Evangelicalism, utterly panic-stricken by the increasing 
 power of modern Rationalism, has fled for refuge even 
 into the accursed Babylon itself, and become drunk with 
 the cup of the apocalyptic harlot. It is this danger 
 of liberty, this sense of shivering homelessness, that 
 comes over the spirits of a certain sort of men when 
 they find themselves beyond the shelter of authority, 
 which drove Dr. Newman himself and many others with 
 him into the Roman Communion. It is this very same 
 danger which compelled Dr. Pusey to unite with the 
 Evangelicals in defence of their common faith ; while all 
 along he protests most earnestly that he has not shifted 
 his ground, and that his likings and dislikings, his 
 approvals and disapprovals, in respect to Evangelicalism, 
 are exactly what they were before. 
 
 " What I ventured on one occasion to remark to Arclideacon 
 Manning," he says, " was not that he used io join with those with 
 
EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 213 
 
 whom I could not, but that he joined with them in away at wliich 
 I was surprised. In plain words he remained a member of, I 
 think, two religious societies, some of whose principles I thought 
 that we both held to be faulty. I have united with the Evan- 
 gelicals now, as I did before, whenever they would join with me 
 in defence of our common faith ; I have not united with them in 
 any of those things which were not in accordance with my own 
 principles. It was not anytliing new then, when in high places 
 fundamental truths had been denied, I sought to unite with those, 
 some of whom had often spoken against me, but against whom I 
 had never spoken. It was the pent-up longing of years. I had 
 long felt that common zeal for faith could alone bring together 
 those who were opposed ; I hoped that through that common zeal 
 and love, inveterate prejudices, which hinder the reception of 
 truth, would be dispelled. This, however, was a bright vista 
 wliich lay beyond. The immediate object was to resist unitedly 
 an inroad upon our common faith. This I had done before upon 
 occasions less urgent." * 
 
 These words help to prove, what it is quite plain that 
 Dr. Pusey admits, the fundamental identity of Angli- 
 canism and Evangelicalism. The Evangelicals do not 
 believe quite so much as the Tractarians think they 
 ought to believe ; they do not believe, for instance, in 
 baptismal regeneration, or in the Real Presence ; they 
 do not believe that the priest has any mystic and super- 
 natural power to absolve from sin — and the Bishop of 
 Natal is so far in the same predicament. What, then, 
 is the difference between Dr. Colenso and Dr. McNeile ? 
 The difference is not in detail but in principle. Dr. 
 McNeile believes those fundamental doctrines from which 
 the whole Catholic system legitimately follows ; Dr. 
 (jolenso most unquestionably does not believe them : 
 therefore the very unbelief of the one is more Anglican 
 and more Eoman than the very faith of the other. 
 
 * " Eirenicon," pp. 5, 6. 
 
214 EOMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 Indeed Dr. McNeile might say in the words of Dr. Pusey 
 — words which, if they were not sublime for their piety, 
 would be pitiable for their imbecillity : — "I believe 
 explicitly all which I know God to have revealed to His 
 Church ; and implicitly (implicit^) anything if He has 
 revealed it, which I know not. In simple words I 
 believe all which the Church believes."* 
 
 This is the negative defective side of Catholic 
 orthodoxy, which Dr. Pusey is nevertheless bound to 
 recognise, and whose alliance on occasions of great 
 danger he may feel himself justified in seeking. There 
 is also a positive excessive side, which in the same 
 manner, and for the same reasons, he is also bound to 
 acknowledge. In fact, admitting the logical identity of 
 the three systems, admitting in other words that they 
 all rest upon the same foundation, it may be said that 
 Eomanism is inconsistent, and Anglicanism more 
 inconsistent, and Evangelicalism most inconsistent. 
 Or, to express their relations hj a kind of logical formula, 
 the formula for Romanism might be this : — Every x is 
 y, every y is z, therefore every x together with some a's 
 and &'s is z ; and the formula for Anglicanism might 
 be : — ^Every x is y, every y is z, therefore some x's are 
 z ; and the formula for Evangelicalism might be : — Every 
 x is y, eyerj y is z, but some x's are not z. It may, 
 indeed, be doubted whether after all the inconsistency of 
 the Eoman logic is not in defect rather than in excess. 
 
 At any rate there can be no doubt about the manner 
 in which Dr. Pusey and those who think with him must 
 regard the extravagances of Roman doctrine and ritual ; 
 they must necessarily regard them as mere matters of 
 
 * " Eirenicon," p. 7. 
 
EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 215 
 
 detail, not at all of principle. Indeed, the only difficulty 
 for any impartial observer of this great movement in 
 favour of union, can merely be to discover how the Church 
 of Eome, admitting the fundamental principles of 
 Anglicanism and Evangelicalism to be true, can by any 
 possibility have erred either by excess or by defect. 
 
 For many a long year to come the " Eirenicon " of 
 Dr. Pusey will be one of the best furnished armouries 
 for those who wish and endeavour to bring about the 
 destruction of the Church of Rome. It is scarcely too 
 much to say that no book written within the present 
 century has so completely demonstrated the hideous, 
 not to say blasphemous extravagance of popular 
 Eomanism, and therefore, by implication, the rottenness 
 of the foundation upon which it rests. That part of 
 the Roman system which is at the present time under- 
 going the most rapid development is the cultus of the 
 Virgin Mary ; but even this is regarded by Dr. Pusey 
 only as a danger, a possible evil, which a good Catholic 
 might tolerate in another so long as he was not himself 
 required to submit to it. And yet it is not too much to 
 say that the popular cultus of the Virgin Mary: — which 
 may or may not be authorized — is to the .last degree 
 blasphemous. The newly defined dogma of the Im- 
 maculate Conception is in itself not half so absurd as 
 the ordinary doctrine of original sin, but that dogma, or 
 any other physical or metaphysical subtlety, can have a 
 very slight effect upon practical piety. They may well 
 admit the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, 
 who believe that no human spirit is born in sin ; that 
 sin, in fact, is personal and Untransferable. But surely 
 no Protestant need hesitate to denounce, with the utmost 
 severity, such extravagances of Mariolatry as are quoted 
 
216 ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 in Dr. Pusey's "Eirenicon," when even Dr. Newman 
 himself can only speak of them in such terms as 
 these : — 
 
 " After such explanations," he says, " and with such authorities 
 to clear my path, I put away from me, as you would wish, with- 
 out any hesitation, as matters in wliioh my heart and reason have 
 no part, when taken in their literal and absolute sense, as any 
 Protestant would naturally take them, and as the virriters doubt- 
 less did not use them, such sentences and phrases as these : — 
 ' That the mercy of Mary is infinite ; that God has resigned into 
 her hands His omnipotence ; that (unconditionally) it is safer to 
 seek her than her Sou ; that the blessed Virgin is superior to 
 God; that He ia (simply) subject to her command; that our 
 Lord is now of the same disposition as His Father towards 
 sinners, viz., disposition to reject them, while Mary takes His 
 place, as an advocate with Father and Son ; that the saints are 
 more ready to intercede with Jesus than with the Father ; that 
 Mary is the only refuge of those with whom God is angry ; that 
 Mary alone can obtain a Protestant's conversion ; that it would 
 have sufficed for the salvation of men if our Lord had died, not 
 to obey His Father, but to defer to the decrees of His mother ; 
 that she rivals our Lord in being God*s daughter, not by adoption, 
 but by a kind of nature ; that Christ fulfilled the office of Saviour 
 by imitating her virtues ; that as the Incarnate God bore the 
 image of His Father, so He bore the image of His mother ; that 
 redemption derived from Christ, indeed, its sufficiency, but from 
 Mary its beauty and loveliness ; that as we are clothed with the 
 merits of Christ, so we are clothed with the merits of Mary ; that 
 as He is priest, in like manner is she priestess ; that His body 
 and blood in the Eucharist are truly hers, and appertain to her ; 
 that as He is present and received therein, so is she present and 
 received therein; that priests are ministers as of Christ so of 
 Mary ; that elect souls are born of God and Mary ; that the Holy 
 Ghost brings into fruitfulness His actions by her, producing in 
 her and by her, Jesus Christ in His members ; that the kingdom 
 of God in our souls, as our Lord speaks, is really the kingdom of 
 Mary in the soul — and she and the Holy Ghost produce in the 
 soul extraordinary things — and when the Holy Ghost finds Mary 
 in a soul He fUles there.' 
 
EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 217 
 
 " Sentiments such as these I never knew of till I read your 
 book ; nor, as I think, do the vast majority of English Catholics 
 know them. They seem to me like a bad dream. I could not 
 have conceived them to be said. I know not to what authority to 
 go for them, to scriptures, or to the Fathers, or to the decrees of 
 councils, or to the consent of schools, or to the tradition of the 
 faithful, or to the Holy See, or to reason. They defy all luoi 
 theologioi. There is nothing of them in the missal, in the Roman 
 catechism, in the Eoman Raccolta, in the Imitation of Christ, in 
 Gother, Challoner, Milner, or Wiseman, as far as I am aware. 
 They do but scare and confuse me. I should not be holier, more 
 spiritual, more sure of perseverance, if I twisted my moral being 
 into the reception of them ; I should be guilty of fulsome, frigid 
 flattery towards the most upright and noble of God's creatures 
 if I professed them — and of stupid flattery too ; for it would be 
 like the compliment of painting up a young and beautiful princess 
 with the brow of a Plato and the muscle of an Achilles. And I 
 should expect her to tell one of her people in waiting to turn me 
 off her service without warning. Whether thus to feel be the 
 soandalum parvulorum in my case, or the soandalum Pharisceorum, 
 I leave others to decide ; but I will say plainly, that I would 
 rather believe (which is impossible) that there is no God at all, 
 tha,n that Mary is greater than God. I have nothing to do with 
 statements which can only be explained by being explained away. 
 I do not, however, speak of these statements as found in their 
 authors, for I know nothing of the originals, and cannot beheve 
 that they meant what you say ; but I take them as they lie in 
 your pages. Were any of them the sayings of saints in ecstacy, I 
 should know they had a good meaning ; still I should not repeat 
 them myself ; but I am looking at them, not as spoken by the 
 tongues of angels, but according to that literal sense which they 
 bear in the mouths of English men and English women. And, as 
 spoken by man to man, in England, in the nineteenth century, 
 I consider them as calculated to prejudice inquirers, to frighten 
 the unlearned, to unsettle consciences, to provoke blasphemy, 
 and to work the loss of souls."* 
 
 And yet the same Dr. Newman can write : — 
 
 " Now, as you know, it has been held from the first, and 
 
 * " A Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., &o., by John Hemy 
 Newman, D.D.," pp. 118—121. 
 
218 ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 defined from an early age, that Mary is the mother of God. She 
 is not merely the mother of our Lord's manhood, or of our Lord's 
 body, but she is to be considered the mother of the Word Him- 
 self, the Word incarnate, God in the person of the Word, the 
 second person of the All-glorious Trinity humbled Himself to 
 become her son. ' Thou didst not shrink from the virgin's womb,' 
 as the Church sings. He took the substance of His human flesh 
 from her, and clothed in it He lay within her, and He bore it 
 about with Him as a sort of badge and witness that He, through 
 God, was hers. As time went on He ministered to her and obeyed 
 her. He lived with her for tliirty years in one house, with an 
 uninterrupted intercourse, and with only the saintly Joseph to 
 share it with Him. She was the witness of His growth, of His 
 joys, of His sorrows, of His prayers ; she was blessed with His 
 smile, with the touch of His hands, with the whispers of His 
 affection, with the expression of His thoughts and His feelings 
 for that length of time. Now, my brethren, what ought she to be, 
 what is it becoming she should be, who was so favoured ? Such 
 a question was once asked by a heathen king when he would 
 place one of his subjects in a dignity becoming the relation in 
 which he stood towards him. That subject had saved the king's 
 life, and what was to be done to him in return ? The king asked, 
 ' What shall be done to the man whom the king delighteth to 
 honour ? ' And he received the following answer : — ' The man 
 whom the king wisheth to honour ought to be clad in the king's 
 apparel, and to be mounted on the king's saddle, and to receive 
 the royal diadem on his head ; and let the first among the king's 
 princes and presidents hold his horse, and let liim walk through 
 the streets of the city and say, " Thus shall be honoured, whom 
 the king hath a mind to honour.' " So stands the case with Mary ; 
 she gave birth to the Creator, and what recompense shall be 
 made her ? What shaU be done to her who had this relationship 
 to the Most High ? What shall be the fit accompaniment of one 
 whom the Almighty has deigned not to make His servant, not 
 His friend, not His intimate but His superior ; the source of His 
 sacred being, the nurse of His helpless infancy, the teacher of 
 His opening years ? I answer as the king was answered, nothing 
 is too high for her to whom God owes His life ; no exuberance of 
 grace, no excess of glory, but is becoming, but is to be expected 
 there, where God has lodged Himself, whence God has issued. 
 Let her ' be clad in the king's apparel,' that is, let the fulness of 
 
EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 219 
 
 the Godhead so flow into her that she may be a figure of the 
 incommunicable sanctity, and beauty, and glory of God Hunself : 
 that she may be the mirror of justice, the mystical rose, the tower of 
 ivory, the house of gold, the morning star; .let her receive the king's 
 diadem upon her head as the queen of heaven, the mother of all 
 living, the health of the weak, the refuge of sinners, the comforter 
 of the afiiioted, and ' let the first among the kiug's princes walk 
 before her,' let angels, and prophets, and apostles, and martyrs, 
 and all saints kiss the hem of her garment, and rejoice under the 
 shadow of her throne. Thus it is that King Solomon has risen 
 to meet his mother, and bowed himself unto her, and caused a 
 seat to be set for the king's mother, and she sits on His right 
 hand."* 
 
 It is surely not too much to say, that when these 
 sentences are not blankly and incurably absurd, or 
 redeemed by a pious intention, they are unconsciously 
 more blasphemous than all the blasphemies of "infidels" 
 put together. And yet this is nearer to Anglicanism, 
 and nearer to Evangelicalism, than Colenso's " Introduc- 
 tion to the Pentateuch." And, moreover, though the 
 Evangelical leaders have the utmost suspicion of Dr. 
 Pusey, though they have been protesting against him 
 for years, and are protesting against him still, though 
 they think him spiritually at one with the Eoman Church 
 in those very particulars which constitute her the 
 Apocalyptic Babylon, yet their instincts of self-preserva- 
 tion compelled them to avail themselves of his ready and 
 powerful help in their hopeless conflict with the secular 
 element in the Establishment. What are even his 
 Romeward tendencies and Eomish doctrines, the fact 
 that he has given his name to that very movement in 
 the Church which the Evangelicals so bitterly resent, 
 
 *■ " Discourses to Mixed Congregations," quoted in Canon Oakley's 
 Pamphlet, pp. 43 — 45. 
 
220 ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 compared with the enormous dangers of that open 
 criticism, that exhaustive inquiry, that free utterance 
 which is destroying the very foundations of dogmatic 
 orthodoxy ? 
 
 That one foundation which Evangelicals, Anglicans, 
 and Romanists alike require, is infallible dogma, and 
 some available guardian or depository of infallible dogma. 
 This is admitted by Dr. Pusey in his scornful caricature 
 of Freethinkers, in the preface to his " Prophet Daniel." 
 He derides their diversities and uncertainties, just as 
 Bossuet derided the variations of Protestantism. He 
 insists that there shall be one meaning of the word 
 "eternal," authorized and unalterable; one authorized 
 and infallible doctrine of atonement ; one unchangeable 
 dogma of inspiration ; one authoritative definition of the 
 nature and value of the Bible. Without this dogmatic 
 certainty, he asks, "How can there be any union?" 
 It was this " fascinating language," as Dr. McNeile 
 assures us, which charmed the Evangelicals. " Such 
 exclusive adherence to definite truth came like trumpet 
 sounds from the Professor's chair, stirring the hearts of 
 the truly Evangelical members of the Church of England. 
 They unfeignedly rejoiced, willing and more than willing 
 to forgive the past and forget all complicity with Tract 
 Christianity ; all the ambiguity, not to say heterodoxy, 
 which caused the University to silence for a time her 
 own distinguished son ; and to hail the Professor as a 
 champion, not only furnished with weapons beyond any 
 of his contemporaries, but now determined to wield them 
 in defence of definite truth, the ' sole meaning ' of plain 
 and popular language." * 
 
 * " Fidelity and Unity. A Letter, &c." By tlie Kev. H. 
 McNeUe, D.D. 
 
EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 221 
 
 Dr. Pusey sneers at the differing Freethinkers, and 
 Dr. Manning sneers at the differing Anglicans. Where 
 is the infallible dogma of the English Church ? And 
 without infallible dogma what possible assurance have 
 we that we are not believing and propagating lies, and 
 fraternising with those whom God hath cursed ? This 
 then is the great foundation — dogmatic orthodoxy; 
 which party really has it ? The answer to this question 
 will indicate what we mean by the logical identity of 
 Romanism, Anglicanism, and Evangelicalism, and by 
 their comparative inconsistencies. It will also indicate 
 the immeasurable importance of that great Reformation 
 which, at this very hour, is turning the whole world of 
 religion upside down. 
 
 If there be any such thing as infallible doctrine at 
 all, its - origin must surely be sought for in those 
 promises which Christ gave to His disciples, and which 
 are believed by all the three great parties to have been 
 partly or completely fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost. 
 When the apostles were in the "upper room," "con- 
 tinuing with one accord in prayer and supplication with 
 the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his 
 brethren," then we are told that the Holy Ghost, 
 according to the promise of the Saviour, revealed to 
 them explicitly what was needed for the present time, 
 and implicitly " the whole truth." Moreover, that first 
 revelation was but an earnest of good things to come. 
 To unroll that truth which is enfolded in a few facts 
 and implied in a few leading dogmas, is almost as 
 difficult, if not even more difficult, than to discover the 
 truth itself. How to secure a complete development 
 without corruption ; how to apply the truth that is in 
 Jesus to all the varying circumstances and necessities of 
 
^22 EOMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 the Jewish and heathen world, and of that new world of 
 which Christ's advent was the beginning — this was a 
 problem more difficult of solution than almost any 
 other. The difficulty of its solution has, in fact, been 
 demonstrated by the fact that it has never yet been 
 solved ; what a Romanist considers a legitimate and 
 even necessary development of the original truth, the 
 Anglican considers an extravagance, and the Evangelical 
 a corruption. And yet they all alike believe both in the 
 original promise of the gift of the Holy Ghost, and in 
 the power of prayer. Indeed, it may truly be affirmed 
 that the extremest Evangelicals, even in the narrowest 
 of dissenting sects, hold this belief as firmly as the 
 Romanists themselves. Nothing but a familiar ac- 
 quaintance with the extravagance of sectarianism can 
 enable any one to understand in what unexpected ways 
 religious extremes meet. Dirty little pieces of paper, 
 with announcements, of which the following is a fair 
 sample, may often be met with among what may be 
 called the Evangelical Bohemians : — 
 
 "YES, OUR KING STILL REIGNS ! 
 
 Please pay Him a visit 
 
 Next Tuesday, at Seven o'clock, Ootobeb 10th, 1865, 
 
 at his house, 
 
 The Welch Chapel, Eldon Street, Finsbuhy. 
 
 He wiU be at tome, and His servants with- Him, Mr. J. W. 
 Richardson and Chadwick, Calvinistic Ministers ; and: Mr. G. 
 Shaw, Allberby, Taylor, Loader, Revivalists, and others, who 
 wiU kneel at His feet, and .sing praises, and pray, and pay homage 
 to Him, and thank Him for giving them liberty. 
 
 Mr. R. will preach the words He shall say unto them, on 
 behalf of His fund and cause. Long reign our King, whose name 
 is Jesus ! Come then and see Him ! You are welcome. 
 
 [Eymer, Printer, New Eoad, E." 
 
EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 223 
 
 When vulgar fanaticism, or that blind credulity which is 
 supposed to become a virtue when it receives the name 
 oi faith, takes such a form as this, it is simply laughed 
 at by all educated people ; and yet it differs in no 
 essential particular from the pompous pretensions of the 
 Roman hierarchy or the equally pompous pretensions of 
 that anile and powerless assembly the convocation of 
 Anglican clergy. They all alike, with more or less of 
 inward belief, rely upon the efficacy of prayer, the pro- 
 mise of the Holy Ghost, and the infallible truth of 
 whatever the Holy Ghost may teach. " It seemed good 
 to the Holy Ghost and to us," is an ecclesiastical 
 formula that we find even in the New Testament itself; 
 and if that formula means anything, it is scarcely too 
 much to say that it means everything. If the Holy 
 Ghost can be summoned on every fresh occasion by 
 earnest prayer, there is no reason why the teaching of 
 Messrs. Eichardson and Chadwick, Calvinistic ministers, 
 and Messrs. Shaw, AUberry, Taylor, Loader, Revivalists, 
 should not be as true and as valuable as the teaching of 
 the Pope himself. 
 
 The Romanists ■ unquestionably believe, and have for 
 centuries acted upon the belief, that the promise of 
 Christ was true, that it was fulfilled on the Day of 
 Pentecost, and that it has been refulfilled again and 
 again, as often as occasion has arisen. They believe, for 
 instance, that it was fulfilled at the Council of Nice; 
 that it was fulfilled again at the Council of Ephesus : 
 that it was fulfilled again at the Council of Trent ; that 
 it was fulfilled again in the definition of the dogma of 
 the Immaculate Conception ; and that it is fulfilled 
 passively as it . were, and negatively, throughout the, 
 Roman obedience. This js, of course, perfectly con- 
 
224 
 
 BOMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 sistent, and it seems altogether impossible to fix upon 
 any one occasion when this faith, supposing it to have 
 been reasonable in the beginning, became unreasonable 
 and fruitless. The Church met for instance to deter- 
 mine the conditions upon which the Gentiles should be 
 received into the fellowship of Christ's religion. It 
 cannot be doubted that, according to their custom, they 
 had prayed ; there was. also, as we learn from the 
 narrative itself, considerable discussion. But the 
 apostles and elders unquestionably believed that the 
 promise of Christ would be again fulfilled, and that in 
 this, their first great difficulty, they would not only be 
 preserved from error, but led into truth. It was, indeed, 
 a matter of the gravest importance, amounting almost to 
 a determination of what was the essence of the Christian 
 religion and the true foundation of the Christian Church. 
 The great Gentile world was really the world ; if that 
 had been excluded from the Church the exclusion would 
 have been equivalent to a denial of ' ' the redemption of 
 the world by our Lord Jesus Christ." The decision at 
 which the apostles and elders arrived, not only consti- 
 tutes a crisis in Church history, but would have been 
 absurd, at least in their own judgment, if it had not been 
 founded upon some Divine authority. Therefore they 
 wrote after this manner : — " The apostles and elders 
 and brethren send greeting unto the brethren which are 
 of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia. For- 
 asmuch, as we have heard, that certain which went out 
 from us have troubled you with words, subverting your 
 souls, saying, Ye must be circumcised, and keep the law : 
 to whom we gave no such commandment : it seemeth 
 good to us, being assembled with one accord, to send 
 chosen men unto you with our beloved Barnabas and 
 
EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 225 
 
 Paul, men that have hazarded their lives for the name of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ. We have sent therefore Judas 
 and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by 
 mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to 
 us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these 
 necessary things ; that ye abstain from meats offered to 
 idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and 
 from fornication : from which if ye keep yourselves, ye 
 shall do well. Fare ye well." 
 
 This decree, if such it must be called, was at once 
 decisive and provisional. It decided what was of primary 
 importance, that the blessings of God, and, above all, re- 
 pentance and faith, and those gifts which were supposed 
 to be the special tokens of the favour of the Holy Ghost, 
 were by no means confined to the Jewish people. On 
 the other hand it was provisional, inasmuch as it was on 
 the face of it a condescension to the weaknesses, not to 
 say the prejudices, of converts from Judaism ; and has, in 
 fact, long since become obsolete. Whether or not a 
 Christian shall eat blood, depends now not upon his con- 
 science, but upon his stomach and palate ; while it seems 
 impossible to pretend that even the observance of the 
 first day of the week has any apostolical authority 
 approaching in distinctness or solemnity to this decree, 
 which determined the conditions of communion for 
 Gentile believers. 
 
 Again, there arose controversies about the person of 
 Christ ; in these controversies, also, the very essence of 
 Christianity was called in qiiestion. And if the promise 
 of the Holy Ghost to the Church was worth anything at 
 all, the settlement of all doubts as to the relation of 
 Christ to the Eternal God, and to the human race, was 
 unquestionably a fitting occasion for its fulfilment. 
 
 Q 
 
226 ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 Therefore the Church, duly represented hy those who 
 were its appointibd spiritual leaders and instructors, did 
 meet together invoking the presence and help of the Holy 
 Ghost. The-i-esult of this assembly, this solemn prayer 
 and invocation of the Divine Teacher of all truth, may be 
 found, partly at least, in the Nicene Creed. But this, 
 of course, is not all ; the declaration of the truth was in 
 almost every case accompanied by an anathema upon 
 error. The anathema was as truly the work of the Holy 
 Ghost as the definition of the orthodox doctrine itself. 
 And this only amounts to saying not only that everything 
 the Roman Church believes is infallibly true, but also 
 that everything the Roman Church denies is certainly 
 false. The Holy Ghost not only guided the apostles 
 and their successors into the whole truth, but also deter- 
 mined of whom the Church should consist, so that it is 
 absolutely vain to urge that there has always been a 
 protest against those doctrines which are offensive even 
 to Anglicans, and far more offensive still to Evangelicals. 
 The so-called Council of Ephesus, in which it was 
 determined that the Virgin Mary should be called the 
 " Mother of God," and not simply Mother of Christ, 
 may be regarded as a kind of crucial instance of the truth 
 or falseness of the fundamental principle upon which 
 Romanism, Anglicanism, and Evangelicalism are alike 
 founded. To the devout Catholic, that assembly may no 
 doubt appear a gathering of saints ; to the ordinary lay 
 student of history it can seem nothing better than a dis- 
 orderly rabble of unprincipled fanatics. The proceedings 
 of the council were in direct opposition to the command 
 of the emperor. Cyril and his party with indecent haste 
 anticipated the arrival of those ecclesiastics who were 
 .supposed to be favourable to Nestorius, though they were 
 
EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 227 
 
 known to be on their way to the council, and to be the re- 
 presentatives of a certain school of theology, in the 
 absence of whom no fair and honest decision could 
 possibly be arrived at. But still this rabble of fanatics, 
 called the Council of Ephesus, assembled in the name of 
 the Holy Ghost, invoked His presence, and in prayer 
 besought His assistance. And what shall Dr. McNeile 
 say ? If the prayer were not efficacious, why pray at 
 all ? Many of our prayers are random and unwise, but 
 a prayer that the whole Church of Christ may be pro- 
 tected from fatal error is a prayer about the wisdom of 
 which it is impossible to have a doubt. If such a prayer 
 were not in the name of Christ, and according to the will 
 of God, it is impossible to imagine in what circumstances 
 a fitting prayer can be offered. Moreover, according, to 
 the hyppthesis, the Holy Ghost had long ago deter- 
 mined in a succession of councils and synods who were 
 the fitting persons to constitute a council, to be the true 
 representatives of the true Church. But, on the other 
 hand, if the prayer for the presence and help of the 
 Holy Ghost were effectual, we have the clearest divine 
 sanction of that very foundation upon which the whole 
 cultus of the Virgin Mary rests. If she be indeed the 
 Mother of God it is quite impossible to call her by any 
 name which shall be more significant of everything by 
 which the conscience of a Protestant is shocked ; indeed, 
 to any one who can perceive that this name is not 
 utterly and immeasurably absurd no extravagances of 
 superstition can be even so much as difficult. 
 
 The Evangelicals, indeed, imagine that they have a 
 kind of protection in the canonical writings of the New 
 Testament ; indeed, one might almost fancy, from the 
 letter which Dr. Pusey's " Eirenicon " has brought forth 
 
 q2 
 
228 EOMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 from tlie pen of Dr. McNeile, that the Evangelicals 
 imagine that the iirst work of the Holy Spirit was not to 
 found a Church, but to dictate a Bible. No fancy, of 
 course, can be more completely absurd ; for not only the 
 life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but the 
 institution of the sacraments, the appointment of 
 bishops and presbyters and deacons, the decision about 
 the admission of the Gentiles to the Christian com- 
 munion, and even the rise of some of the earliest 
 heresies, had all taken place before a line of the New 
 Testament was written. Not that the fact is of any grave 
 significance, for the same Holy Ghost who appointed the 
 writers and afterwards insured the canonical authority of 
 the New Testament books had by no means exhausted 
 His resources even in so great an effort. He could still, 
 according to the promise of Christ, meet the living 
 Church on every fresh occasion of danger or need — nay, 
 rather, He would abide with the Church for ever — un- 
 folding more and more the truth that was enfolded in the 
 earliest facts and doctrines of Christianity, providing for 
 its due expression in the ceremonial of the Church, and 
 securing for it a hearty response in the affectionate devo- 
 tions of the faithful. In a word, where are we to stop ? 
 The Holy Ghost determined what was true, and excluded 
 what was false at every step of the progress, from the day 
 of Pentecost to the definition of the Immaculate Concep- 
 tion. Moreover, He blessed those who were orthodox, and 
 He excommunicated those who were heretical, through 
 the whole of that long period. Not only, therefore, did 
 He excommunicate Arians and Nestorians and Pelagians, 
 but He excommunicated the Greeks at the time of the 
 great schism, and the Anglicans in the reign of the 
 Tudors. And He (the Holy Ghost) having never departed 
 
EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 229 
 
 from that Church, for whose guidance He was promised 
 by Jesus Christ,, does at this moment declare that Dr. 
 Pusey and Dr. McNeile, and all their followers, are in 
 mortal sin and in the deepest danger of damnation. 
 Will, then, these divines inform us at what precise 
 period in the history of the Church the prayer of the 
 faithful, or the promise of the Eedeemer, or the power 
 of the Paraclete, became useless and vain ? 
 
 There is only one point at which it could be plausibly 
 contended that the presence of the living Spirit was 
 withdrawn, or that the object and effect of His presence 
 were wholly changed ; and that point is the completion 
 of the New Testament Canon. But not to mention the 
 intrinsic absurdity of such a theory, not one of the three 
 great religious parties so much as pretends to maintain 
 it. The New Testament is not the work exclusively of 
 apostles ; nor would the knowledge of divine truth for- 
 sake the inspired when they had committed it to writing ; 
 nor would it become incapable of different though equi- 
 valent modes of expression. There would, therefore, be 
 a large body of oral teaching handed down by tradition, 
 parallel to the New Testament, of quite equal or rather 
 of the very same authority, and providing an " analogy 
 of faith," according to which the New Testament would 
 be certainly interpreted. Indeed, the Epistles directlj 
 refer to such oral explanation, and affirm their own im- 
 perfection without it. " The rest will I set in order 
 when I come." "All my state shall Tychicus declare 
 unto you." The sternness of the First Epistle to the 
 Corinthians is somewhat softened in the Second ; and 
 the not unnatural mistake about the coming of the Lord 
 which the First Epistle to the Thessalonians seems to 
 have produced, the second was written (partly at least) to 
 
230 BOMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 remoTe. Indeed it would have been clearly ridiculous 
 for an apostle to pretend to inspiration and infallibility 
 in a letter, while he was not sufliciently inspired to 
 correct, or modify, or improve, or enlarge what he him- 
 self had written. In other words, the promised Paraclete 
 was present with the church, so far as He was present 
 at all, before the composition of the New Testament 
 books, and during the period of their composition, and 
 afterwards. He led the Church into the truth as to the 
 canon itself, and over and over again, as to the true in- 
 terpretation of the sacred scriptures. The Bible, and 
 the Bible alone, neither is, nor ever has been the religion 
 even of Protestants. The Bible itself is constructed by 
 the Church, and interpreted according to the creeds. 
 
 Moreover, the Evangelicals themselves profess to 
 believe even still the efficacy of prayer, and the presence 
 and power of the Holy Ghost ; profess to believe it, for 
 the belief is not realized. The sure proof that it is un- 
 realized is this, that it is never with any approach to a 
 genuine consistency acted upon. The Eomanist does 
 really believe in the perpetual fulfilment of Christ's 
 promise of the Spirit, " to lead into the whole truth :" 
 and therefore without a shadow of hesitation he affirms 
 the divine infallibility of even the newest and last of 
 the decisions of the Church. But when an Evangelical 
 clergyman prays for the Spirit, nothing whatever comes 
 of it — except indeed that strange mixture of arrogance 
 and uncertainty which has long been the laughing-stock 
 alike of Papist and Freethinker. He cannot even 
 pretend himself to show what effect his prayer has 
 actually produced ; and that " something " which cannot 
 be ascertained or defined or exhibited, is surely little 
 better than nothing. In recent theological contro- 
 
EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 231 
 
 versies, there has been no end of unctuous praying. 
 Bishop Colenso, for instance, has been prayed for, 
 prayed at, prayed against, lubricated and bespattered by 
 prayer, without a vestige of result, beyond an increase of 
 hypocrisy and petty spite. He has not retracted one of 
 his " errors ; " and, what is much more to the point, his 
 Anglican and Evangelical opponents are not in a position 
 to meet his false teaching and refute it by the only 
 satisfactory refutation — the truth which it contradicts. 
 They meet together in synods, and convocations, and 
 Church congresses ; they pray and discuss ; the Holy 
 Ghost is with them ; they pass resolutions, pronounce 
 anathemas, devise new formularies which are sent over 
 all England for due signature ; and yet they dare not 
 affirm that the whole or any part of these proceedings is 
 the direct and indubitable result of the presence and 
 teaching of the promised Paraclete. He is there with 
 them, but nobody is perfectly sure of it ; He speaks, but 
 nobody hears distinctly what He says; and when 
 Anglicanism or Evangelicalism has arrived at a certain 
 conclusion, it dare not affirm that of that specific con- 
 clusion the Holy Ghost is the author. And yet this is 
 the very thing that both parties desire and admit to be 
 necessary — an external authority which shall answer 
 every doubt and solve every difficulty. Why not enter 
 at once the Holy Church, which now as ever, in Trent or 
 Eome as in Jerusalem, in the nineteenth century as in 
 the first, will still say : "It seemed good to the Holy 
 Ghost, and to us," — and mean. it. 
 
 The identity of Eomanism and even Evangelicalism is 
 curiously enough indicated even in separate doctrines — 
 they are at one in what is fundamental, they differ only 
 superficially, and in the consistency of their conclusions. 
 
232 ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 The doctrine of original sin, as held alike hy Evangelicals 
 and Eomanists, is so intimately connected with the 
 doctrine of baptismal regeneration, that it is hard, if not 
 impossible, to separate them. At any rate, the Eomanist, 
 when he differs from the Evangelical, has immeasurably 
 the best, not only of the argument, but of the (hypotheti- 
 cal) resulting position. An imaginary curse may well be 
 removed by an imaginary absolution or purification, but 
 it is obviously better to get it removed. Moreover, the 
 doctrine of original sin seems to require some such 
 correction as the immaculate conception of the Virgin 
 Mary ; which in return gives a new and greater value to 
 the victim who was to be offered up as a propitiatory 
 sacrifice to the righteousness of God. In fact, Eomanism 
 clearly knows what it is about, sets out from a certain 
 point, and moves on to a clearly perceived end. Evan- 
 gelicalism is forgetful, doubtful, half-believing, denying 
 in its conclusion what it has already affirmed in its 
 premisses, or denying in its doctrinal articles what it is 
 continually affirming in its ritual. It has a practice of 
 prayer, and a theory of its efficacy ; but it is never able 
 to be sure that in a given instance prayer has really heen 
 efficacious. It " believes in the Holy Ghost," but can 
 never utter so much as a single sentence which it dare 
 attribute to His dictation. It acknowledges a "Holy 
 Catholic Church," but it cannot say where it is nor how it 
 may be recognised. Therefore Evangelicalism is utterly 
 powerless in the presence of scepticism ; when even 
 Eome is constantly receiving weary hearts to her motherly 
 breast, and rocking them to a quiet sleep. Piety, devout 
 feeling, the simple worship of God, are to a large extent, 
 and at a certain stage of mental development, independent 
 of intellectual inquiry or formal dogmatic statement, and 
 
EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 233 
 
 tliei'efore may they often be found in ricli and fragi-ant 
 beauty among the EvangeUcal party. But for all strong 
 thinkers, who have been compelled to come face to face 
 with the profound religious problems of our own day, 
 Evangelicalism is for ever impossible. For such there can 
 be only one alternative — a complete and exhaustive external 
 authority or perfect freedom, Eomanism or Eationalism. 
 
 And it is the special work of the reformation of the 
 nineteenth century to bring us to this issue. The battles 
 of the sects are a painful and yet a ludicrous waste of 
 intellectual and spiritual force. The fighters strike 
 hard, but it is a matter of complete uncertainty and 
 comparative indifference upon what head the blows vrill 
 fall. Whether a doctrine be orthodox, and even whether 
 it be useful, is an inquiry full of interest for certain 
 minds ; but all such inquiries are as nothing in the face 
 of the far deeper inquiry, " Is it true ? " The question for 
 our own age is not, " What is 'orthodox'?" but, " What 
 ought to he 'orthodox'?" And in an attempt to solve 
 this problem it is impossible not to ask whether the very 
 notion of " orthodoxy " is not an obsolete impertinence. 
 
 It is by no means necessary to deny, much less is it 
 the object of this essay to deny, the promise of Christ 
 upon which the Church is supposed to rest, or the fulfil- 
 ment of that promise. Surely it is not unreasonable to 
 affirm that in Christendom religious doctrine is far purer 
 and far steadier than anywhere else ; and this may, not 
 unfairly, to say the least, be accounted for by the advent 
 of Christ and the wonderful spiritual impulse that 
 accompanied and followed His advent. But most cer- 
 tainly the extravagances of Eomanism can be met only 
 by a denial that the presence of God in the world implies 
 necessarily the infallibility of any man or of any set of 
 
234 EOMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 men in any age. It did not imply the infallibility of 
 the apostles, who moreover can be shown to have been 
 fallible. It did not preserve from all possibility of error 
 even the little company in the upper room — the disciples 
 who had witnessed the ascension, "with the women, 
 and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brethren." It 
 did not invert the laws of nature or the course of human 
 development. As the perfect man, so the perfect church 
 is in the future, not in the past ; and in the Acts of the 
 Apostles, we can scarcely guess what the building will be, 
 because of the scaffolding. But this is where we must 
 "draw the line ;" — if the apostles as apostles were in- 
 capable of error, and if the promise of the Comforter 
 guaranteed an external authority and an infallible dogma 
 for any age, then we can have no reason to deny the 
 "Immaculate Conception," or to refuse to take our part 
 in the cultus of the Virgin Mary. 
 
 Nor need this absence of external authority and infal- 
 lible dogma in the least degree surprise us ; it is 
 precisely the customary method of His government, who 
 has ordered that in every kind and region of life, 
 material and spiritual, the hand of the diligent only 
 shall make rich. God, we may be sure, has been never 
 for a moment absent from His own creatures ; and the 
 whole universe is as a roll of revelation, written within 
 and without. But there is no infallible guidance to the 
 laws of nature ; though not comfort only, but morality 
 and religion, so much depend upon the knowledge of 
 them. Even within the Bible itself, and the history it 
 records, again and again 
 
 " The old order changeth, giving place to new, 
 And God fulfils Himself in many ways, 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 
 
ETANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 235 
 
 ETen in Judaism itself the prophets were continually 
 breaking to pieces the externals both of doctrine and 
 ritual, when they were so hardening round human spirits 
 as to shut out from them the fresh air of heaven, and to 
 rob them of the freedom in which alone there was life ; 
 and so far as the new reformation is negative it denies 
 only that the living Spirit will imprison Himself in a 
 single set of dogmas or society of men, or that "the 
 whole truth can be exhausted in a single age." 
 
 It has been of the greatest service to this modern 
 movement of free thought that some of its most distin- 
 guished and influential leaders are to be found among 
 the ordained clergy of the Established Church. This 
 fact has obtained at least a hearing, and often a favour- 
 able hearing, for what otherwise would have been passed 
 by with contemptuous neglect. Moreover, it hag 
 strengthened the public confidence that the great 
 religious movement of the present century is a reforma- 
 tion, and not an anarchy. Yet even this good is by no 
 means unmixed with evil; and above all it has brought 
 an undeserved suspicion of insincerity both upon the 
 movement itself and upon those illustrious churchmen 
 who are assuredly among its best helpers. They have 
 given abundant proof of their integrity to satisfy every 
 mind not incapable of candour ; and yet it cannot be 
 denied that their outward connection with the Anglican 
 Church has been to many minds wholly inexplicable. 
 The dogmas of the Establishment — the Thirty-nine 
 Articles, the Homilies, the Athanasian Creed, and the 
 like— can scarcely be defended on the ground that they 
 are the truth and nothing but the truth ; much less on 
 the ground that they are the whole truth. Nor can the 
 leaders of the Broad Church party accept them purely and 
 
236 ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, ETC. 
 
 simply on authority ; inasmuch as the Eeformation, in 
 which they have so conspicuous a share, involves the 
 repudiation of a merely external authority. Hence it 
 has come to pass that some of the noblest and most 
 transparently honest clergymen of this or any age have 
 been exposed, with just the faintest and most deceptive 
 shadow of justice, to the charge of trickery and mercenari- 
 ness. Nevertheless, it is as dishonest to go on faster 
 than our convictions as it is to loiter behind them ; and 
 there can be no doubt that free inquiry is the cure not 
 only of ignorance and error, but of transitory incon- 
 sistencies. But it is more and more becoming plain 
 that Romanism is the only perfectly consistent and 
 trustworthy form of religion by authority ; and that the 
 only other religion possible for a careful reasoner is the 
 religion of conscience and reason and spirit. 
 
RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 It is extremely difficult for well-educated men to under- 
 stand that abhorrence of Eationalism, which undoubtedly 
 prevails among religious people in this country. So 
 much even of the popular theology is based upon 
 Rationalism, and must rapidly perish if removed from 
 that foundation, that to discourage Rationalism seems 
 little short of the suicide of " orthodoxy." Puritanism 
 as distinguished from Anglicanism is essentially ration- 
 alistic ; and so is Anglicanism as distinguished from 
 Popery. And yet in the English Episcopal Church, 
 the ecclesiastical dignitaries are constantly doing their 
 utmost to return to that authority, whose first free 
 utterance would anathematize themselves ; and the 
 Puritans, who have far outstript the Anglicans in their 
 rejection of tradition, are so perplexed by the confusion 
 and utter uncertainty which are among the first-fruits of 
 liberty, that they are for ever eager to return to that 
 house of bondage which, after all, had more rest than 
 the first rough pilgrimage of freedom. 
 
 Such books as Mr. Lecky's,t while they encourage and 
 
 * From the "Journal of Sacred Literature," October, 1865. 
 
 f " History of the Kise and Influence of the Spirit of Ration- 
 alism in Europe. By W. E. A. Lecky, M.A." Longman and Co., 
 1865. Alterations in the second edition are so exceedingly few, 
 that I have not thought it necessary to correct the references in 
 tliis essay ; which are, therefore, always made to the first edition. 
 
238 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 brace all genuine lovers of freedom and truth, can by no 
 means be received as giving a faithful picture of the 
 average intellectual condition of our own age. Indeed, 
 they are intended -rather to indicate what are the 
 dominant tendencies, the great principles by which the 
 leading spirits of the time are governed, and the high 
 objects at which they are habitually aiming. Every 
 unbiassed reader of Mr. Lecky's book must be perfectly 
 certain that Rationalism is triumphant, that it has given 
 the death-blow to ignorance and superstition, and that 
 what seem to be reactions in favour of exploded errors 
 and senseless mummeries, are but the dying agonies of 
 a monster evil. It is strange, indeed, that in the 
 Protestant Church accomplished scholars and devout 
 saints should still write pamphlets to urge upon the 
 faithful the duty of adoring the Blessed Sacrament, — 
 the duty, in other words, of worshipping a little 
 fragment of bread : but no learning and no sanctity will 
 ever bring back in this country the doctrine of transub- 
 stantiation. Convocations of the clergy may meet as 
 often as they can get leave, to condemn the books that 
 they cannot answer, and to curse the men who are 
 invested with the same high privileges, and surrounded 
 by the same ecclesiastical sanctions as themselves ; but 
 the English nation will never again form its opinion, 
 either of man or book, by the dictation of any convo- 
 cation of clergymen. Men begin to perceive that the 
 power of authority is often nearest to contempt when it 
 is most boastful ; and they simply laugh, where, but a 
 few generations ago, they would have trembled and died. 
 The Pope, for instance, within these last few years, 
 hurls anathemas at all civilised' Europe, excommunicates 
 princes, lays whole kingdoms under an interdict, and 
 
EATIONALISH IN EUEOPE. 239 
 
 promulgates new absurdities as necessaiy doctrines of 
 Christendora, in the name of the Holy Ghost. But 
 everybody can see plainly enough that he is seated on 
 no rock, against which the gates of hell cannot prevail ; 
 but only upon a crazy, broken-legged stool, propped up 
 by French bayonets ; and that his incredible dogmas 
 and preposterous policy have not half as much of the 
 wisdom of the Holy Ghost as the honest cobbling of 
 shoes. We read some literary organ of ultramontanism, 
 — for even the very spirit of darkness must light his 
 little literary candle, that people may know whereabouts 
 he is, — and we might almost imagine ourselves living 
 in the middle ages. Or again, we read the literary organs 
 of some of the narrower sects and parties in the religious 
 world — the imbecile and fetid rubbish, for instance, of 
 The Record — and we might imagine that since the 
 Eeformation, England had simply fallen back again into 
 chaos ; that there was no longer any attempt to found 
 doctrines upon reason and fact, but only upon the bare 
 assertion of any man who has the brassiest voice, and 
 the most unblushing effrontery. Yet all these creatures, 
 Popes and Convocations, Tablets and Records, are only 
 writhing in the firm grasp of Rationalism ; that great 
 slayer of monsters, which goes forth over all Europe, 
 and over all the world, conquering and to conquer. 
 
 Mr. Lecky's book then is very reassuring to everybody 
 who is engaged on the side of freedom, in the great 
 battle against falsehood and superstition, and intellectual 
 thraldom ; and assuredly all such soldiers need to be 
 reassured. For the vast majority of British Christians 
 are not only irrational, but bitterly resent every effort to 
 support even their own belief by some foundation of 
 reason. They think that if some party can give them a 
 
240 EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 reason for their faith, some other party may be able to 
 give them a reason against their faith. Eeason, there- 
 fore, seems to them to be a two-edged sword, of 
 wonderful and admirable sharpness, perfectly fitted for 
 hewing Agag in pieces before the Lord ; but unfortu- 
 nately without a hilt, so that even Samuel must cut his 
 own hands while slaying the Lord's enemies. They do 
 not perceive that they who worship Grod must worship 
 Him in spirit and in truth ; and therefore they worship 
 Him with ceremonies and make-believes, and the vain 
 repetition of unintelligible jargon. When God bids 
 them discover what kind of sacrifice would please 
 Him, and offer that to Him, when they have heart 
 and love enough to be glad to do it, they reject 
 all such counsel as utterly useless and visionaiy ; 
 and instead of such a sacrifice they pile up on 
 God's altar heaps of lifeless victims, as if He would 
 " drink bulls' blood, and eat the flesh of goats," or were 
 a kind of poor celestial bankrupt, in need of vast 
 contributions of guineas. When God bids them prove 
 all things, and hold fast only that which is good, then 
 they flatly refuse to do anything of the sort ; and say, 
 either that they are laymen and have not time, or that 
 they are fools and have not wit, or that they are infidels 
 and have not faith, and that their whole morality and 
 religion rests only upon certain printed words, and not 
 on the living God Himself. The great mass of the 
 religious people of this generation are totally incapable 
 of perceiving the full beauty even of their own religion ; 
 and are right, where they are right at all, only by a happy 
 accident. Long intercourse with them, unrelieved by 
 nobler fellowship, is a deadly narcotic, stupefying both 
 the intellect and the conscience. Most certainly it is 
 
RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 241 
 
 well that we should be reminded again and again by 
 such books as Mr. Lecky's, that this mean preference 
 for unreasoning prejudice, and this suspicious hatred of 
 the all-manifesting light, is surely doomed ; that it is 
 the mere corpse of a past that has not yet been able to 
 obtain decent burial ; that it is the mere paganism of 
 Christianity. 
 
 Mr Lecky has himself defined what he means by 
 Eationalism. 
 
 " My object," he says, " in the present work has been to trace 
 the history of the spirit of Rationalism ; by which I understand, 
 not any class of definite doctrines or criticisms, but rather a 
 certain cast of thought, or bias of reasoning, which has during 
 the last three centuries gained a marked ascendancy in Europe. 
 The nature of this bias will be exhibited in detail in the ensuing 
 pages, where we examine its iniiuence upon the various forms of 
 moral and intellectual development. At present it will be 
 sufficient to say, that it leads men on all occasions to subordinate 
 dogmatic theology to the dictates of reason and of conscience, 
 and, as a necessary consequence, greatly to restrict its influence 
 upon life. It predisposes men, in history, to attribute aU kinds of 
 phenomena to natural rather than miraculous causes ; in theology, 
 to esteem succeeding systems the expressions of the wants and 
 aspirations of that religious sentiment which is planted in all 
 men; and in ethics, to regard as duties only those which 
 conscience reveals to be such."* 
 
 It is of course necessary to bear in mind that this is 
 Mr. Lecky's own definition of the word Eationalism; 
 his own account of the bias or tendency whose growth 
 and influence he endeavours to describe. Every author 
 has a perfect right to declare in what sense he uses the 
 words which he has most frequent occasion to employ, 
 even if he intends to depart somewhat from their 
 ordinary usage. But in his use of the term "Eation- 
 
 Pp. 18, 19. 
 
 R 
 
242 RATIONAIiISM IN EUEOPB. 
 
 alism," Mr. Lecky only so far departs from the ordinary 
 usage as to exclude from its connotation any implication 
 of recklessness, or dishonesty, or rebellion against the 
 truth. It may almost be affirmed that, to begin with, 
 there is no truth, but only and infinite number of facts 
 and relations — to be discovered, arranged, and described 
 in human language. Then real facts are represented by 
 true propositions ; and, in like manner, all facts beyond the 
 reach of observation can be represented as truths only 
 by propositions which are essentially hypothetical. 
 " If the source of my information he trustworthy, there 
 are certain facts which I have no means directly of 
 observing, but which may be considered real because 
 they have been observed by others." It is characteristic 
 of Eationalism that it knows no truths which are not the 
 representatives of observed facts ; and that it requires 
 their having been observed to be completely demon- 
 strated. It is, therefore, always destructive of those 
 complicated theories, and systems of dogmas, which rest 
 upon actually nothing but the unsupported assertion of 
 people who cannot be proved to be in a position to know 
 what they affirm. Those who accept such theories know 
 perfectly that they will not bear examination ; and yet the 
 theories are in part well founded, and have moreover a 
 practical value, and are referred by them to a divine source, 
 and are associated with their deepest religious feelings. 
 A rationalist, therefore, is to them a man who denies the 
 truth, who destroys practical piety, who repudiates divine 
 guidance, and who is a cold-hearted profligate. So con- 
 stant is this belief among the uninstructed, that they mass 
 together all inquirers into the foundations of religion in one 
 class of mischievous evil-doers; and they name the class ac- 
 cording to their own prejudices, their own notion of what is 
 
BATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 243 
 
 most utterly shameful and base. At the last general elec- 
 tion, for instance, as every one remembers, Mr. J. S. Mill 
 was represented over and over again as an Atheist; not be- 
 cause he is an Atheist, but simply because he found it abso- 
 lutely impossible to believe in a God who was represented 
 to be very far inferior to even the average of human beings. 
 Hume, and Gibbon, andVolney, and Eousseau, and Vol- 
 taire, and the Dean of Westminster, and the Rev. F. D. 
 Maurice, and Professor Jowett, and Bishop Colenso, have 
 repeatedly — with total indifference to the fact that some of 
 them are unquestionably among the best men who have 
 ever lived, and that probably no two of them would be found 
 to agree, either in their methods of inquiry, or in their re- 
 sults — been grouped together as infidels, destroyers of the 
 Church, subverters of the Word of God, profane profligates. 
 They agree, though perhaps some of them might dispute 
 even that, simply in the fact that they do not, and indeed 
 cannot, believe what is opposed to the dictates of reason and 
 conscience; and to those dictates they habitually subordi- 
 nate dogmatic theology. Some of them think that the 
 creed of Christendom, and especially the teaching of the 
 sacred Scriptures, expresses perfectly the truth concerning 
 God and the duty of man ; and they do not seem to be 
 aware how after all they may be submitting their reason to 
 some external authority, simply because that authority has 
 been first guaranteed by reason. Others reject the Bible 
 and the creeds because they are unable to discover that 
 reason will consent to submit to them. But all alike be- 
 long to the class of those who seek for real facts, and the 
 fittest verbal expression of them ; or if any of them have 
 been immoral or profligate, if they were trying in some 
 directions to suppress that very spirit of inquiry, the 
 suppression of which in their own case they would have 
 
 k2 
 
244 RATIONALISM IN EUKOPE. 
 
 considered a most unjustifiable persecution, then it must 
 be said that they were most imperfect rationalists, and 
 that they forgot for others what they knew to be essential 
 for themselves. Mr. Lecky, then, in his very definition 
 of rationalism, has done good service to the cause of 
 truth, and thereby also to the cause of charity. He has 
 removed entirely from the meaning of the word every- 
 thing that can shock even the most sensitive conscience. 
 A rationalist is not necessarily either orthodox or hereti- 
 cal, he is not necessarily a good man, much Ibss is he neces- 
 sarily a bad man ; but in so far as he is a rationalist he is 
 a seeker after truth, preserving himself as far as possible 
 from every bias that would prevent his finding it. 
 
 " It is manifest," says Mr. Lecky,* " tliat, in attempting to 
 write the history of a mental tendency, some difficulties have to 
 he encountered quite distinct from those which attend a simple 
 
 relation of facts Probably the greatest difficulty of 
 
 such a process of investigation arises from the wide difference 
 between professed and realized belief. When an opinion that is 
 opposed to the age is incapable of modification, and is an obstacle 
 to progress, it will at last be openly repudiated ; and if it is 
 identified with any existing interests, or associated with some 
 eternal truth, its rejection will be accompanied by paroxysms of 
 painful agitation. But much more frequently civilization makes 
 opinions that are opposed to it simply obsolete. They perish by 
 indifference, not by controversy. They are relegated to the dim 
 twilight land that surrounds every living faith ; the land, not of 
 death, but of the shadow of death ; the land of the unreahzed 
 and the inoperative. Sometimes, too, we find the phraseology, 
 the ceremonies, the formularies, the external aspect of some phase 
 of belief that has long since perished, connected with a system 
 that has been created by the wants, and is thrilling with the 
 life, of modern civilization. They resemble those images of 
 departed ancestors which it is said the ancient Ethiopians were 
 accustomed to paint upon their bodies, as if to preserve the 
 
 *Pp 19—21. 
 
RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 245 
 
 pleasing illusion that those could not reaUy be dead whose linea- 
 ments were still visible among them, and were still associated 
 with Ufe. In order to appreciate the change, we must translate 
 these opinions into action, must examine what would be their 
 effects if fully realized, and ascertain how far those effects are 
 actually produced. It is necessary, therefore, not merely to 
 examine successive creeds, but also to study the types of character 
 of successive ages." 
 
 These remarks, which are obviously true, furnish the 
 key to a large part of the most interesting portions of 
 Mr. Lecky's book. The histoiy of what men have 
 believed is one thing, and the history of what they 
 think they have believed is a totally different thing; 
 and it requires not a little skill to determine when a 
 man has been totally mistaken, even in his own belief. 
 The test applied by Mr. Lecky, though even that test is 
 not always easily applied, is the simplest and the surest. 
 What a man really believes cannot fail to influence his 
 conduct ; the creed which does not influence a man's 
 conduct, however strong its language may be, in spite of 
 its most magnificent promises and cruelest anathemas, 
 is httle better than a delusion. It has ceased to be 
 operative, and therefore it may be inferred that it has 
 ceased really to live. Illustrations of the application of 
 this test abound in every part of Mr. Lecky's work. 
 His first chapter is "On the declining sense of the 
 Miraculous — Magic and Witchcraft ;" and it is a com- 
 plete historical exhibition of the decline and death of a 
 most pestilent superstition, which after a long period of 
 dreadful vitality began slowly to decay, which was dead 
 long before its death was so much as suspected, and 
 which by some few even still is supposed to be not 
 wholly extinct. When good people read of the " witch " 
 of Endor, and " those who have familiar spirits," they 
 
246 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 fancy that they still believe that there really were in 
 times past, and might possibly be again, human beings 
 in constant intercourse with demons. Others, again, 
 " spiritualize " the old-world stories, and fill them up 
 with meanings that were wholly impossible, not only 
 before Christ, but even before the eighteenth century. 
 There may be demons of lust and cruelty and fraud, 
 and spirits of mischief of every sort, with which it is 
 only too easy to become "familiar;" but these are not 
 the devils for which witches were burnt to death. 
 Educated men have ceased to believe not only that there 
 are witches, but that there ever were ; and the utmost 
 that the most credulous can now persuade themselves to 
 admit is simply this, that it would be unwise and 
 dangerous to deny the existence of certain forms of evil 
 which seem to be constantly referred to in the sacred 
 Scriptures. They believe, that is to say, not in witches, 
 but in the general veracity of the Bible. When people 
 really believed in witchcraft, it was quite impossible to 
 doubt both the sincerity of their conviction ; or to doubt 
 that it was a perpetual torment, and an occasion of diabo- 
 lical cruelties which nothing but a perverted sense of 
 duty would ever have been strong enough to produce. 
 
 " Witchcraft,'' says Mr. Buckle,* " was but the reflection by a 
 diseased imagination of tlie popular theology. We accordingly 
 find that it assumed the most frightful proportions and the 
 darkest character. In other lands, the superstition was at least 
 mixed with much of imposture ; in Scotland it appears to have 
 been entirely undiluted. It was produced by the teaching of the 
 clergy, and it was everywhere fostered by their persecution. 
 Eagerly, passionately, with a thirst for blood that knew no mercy, 
 with a zeal that never tired, did they accomplish their task. 
 Assembled in solemn synod, the college of Aberdeen, in 1603, 
 
 * Vol. i., pp. 139—142. 
 
RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 247 
 
 enjoined every minister to take two of tlie elders of his parish to 
 make ' a subtle and privy inquisition,' and to question all the 
 parishioners upon oath as to their knowledge of witches. Boxes 
 were placed in the churches for the express purpose of receiving 
 the accusations. When a woman had fallen under suspicion, the 
 minister from the piilpit denounced her by name, exhorted his 
 parishioners to give evidence against her, and prohibited any one 
 from sheltering her. In the same spirit he exerted the power 
 which was given him by a parochial organization, elaborated 
 perhaps more skilfully than any other in Europe. Under these 
 cireumstances, the witch-cases seem to have fallen almost entirely 
 into the hands of the clergy. They were the leading commissioners. 
 Before them the confessions were taken. They were the ac- 
 quiescing witnesses, or the directors of the tortures by which 
 those confessions were elicited. « 
 
 ■ " And when we read the nature of these tortures, which were 
 worthy of an Oriental imagination ; when we remember that they 
 were inflicted, for the most part, on old and feeble and half-doting 
 women, it is difficult to repress a feeling of the deepest 
 abhorrence for those men who caused and who encouraged them. 
 If the witch was obdurate, the first, and it is said the most 
 effectual, method of obtaining confession was by what was termed 
 ' waking her.' An iron bridle or hoop was bound across her face 
 with four prongs, which were thrust into her mouth. It was 
 fastened behind to the wall by a chain, in such a manner that the 
 victim was unable tq lie down, and in tliis position she was 
 sometimes kept for several days, wliile men were constantly with 
 her to prevent her from closing her eyes for a moment in sleep. 
 Partly in order to effect this object, and partly to discover the 
 insensible mark which was the sure sign of a witch, long pins 
 were thrust into her body. At the same lime, as it was a saying 
 in Scotland that a witch would never confess wliile she could 
 drink, excessive thirst was often added to her tortures. Some 
 prisoners have been waked for five nights ; one, it is said, even 
 for nine. 
 
 " The physical and mental suffering of such a process was 
 sufficient to overcome the resolution of many, and to distract the 
 understanding of not a few. But other and perhaps worse 
 tortures were in reserve. The three principal that were habitually 
 applied were the pennywinkis, the boots, and the oaschielawis. 
 The first was a kind of thiunb-screw ; the second was a frame in 
 
248 RATIONALISM IN ETJEOPE. 
 
 which the leg was inserted, and in which it was broken by wedges, 
 driven in by a hammer ; the third was also an iron frame for the 
 leg, which was from time to time heated over a brazier. Fire- 
 matches were sometimes applied to the body of the victim. We 
 read in a contemporary legal register of one man who was kept 
 for forty-eight hours in ' vehement tortour ' in the casohielawis ; 
 and of another who remained in the same frightful machine for 
 eleven days and eleven nights, whose legs were broken daily for 
 fourteen days in the boots, and who was so scourged that the 
 whole skin was torn from his body. This was, it is true, censured 
 as an extreme case, but it was only an excessive application of 
 the common torture." 
 
 Now that is something like believing in witchcraft ; it 
 was not only a most genuine faith, but it seems to have 
 had a grim unselfishness, making it almost sublime. 
 Many were accused of witchcraft for no other reason 
 than that they were uncommonly skilful in the cure of 
 diseases, and were ever ready to employ their skill for 
 the relief of the suffering. In most Catholic countries the 
 civil power refused to execute persons who were guilty 
 only of the crime of alleviating the miseries of their 
 fellow-creatures. At this gross neglect of obvious duty, 
 the clergy were of course indignant; fortunately only 
 Catholic inquisitors have been able to match the horrors 
 for which Scotch Calvinism has to answer. In Scotland 
 such persons were unscrupulously put to death. And yet, 
 as Mr. Lecky very properly acknowledges, the men who 
 were chiefly guilty of these atrocities are not so much 
 to be blamed as pitied. 
 
 " There are," he says,* " opinions that may be traced from age 
 to age by footsteps of blood ; and the intensity of the suffering 
 they caused is a measure of the intensity with which they were 
 realized. Scotch witchcraft was but the result of Scotch 
 Puritanism, and it faithfully reflected tlie character of its parent. 
 
 *Vol. i., pp. 144, 145. 
 
RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 249 
 
 It is true that before the Reformation the people had been grossly 
 ignorant and superstitious, but it is also true that witchcraft in its 
 darker forms was so rare that no law was made on the subject till 
 1563 ; that the law was not carried to its full severity tUl 1590 ; 
 that the delusion invariably accompanied the reUgioiis terrorism 
 which the Scotch clergy so zealously maintained, and that those 
 clergy, all over Scotland, applauded and stimulated the persecution. 
 The ascendancy they had obtaiued was boundless, and in this 
 respect their power was entirely undisputed. One word from 
 them might have arrested the tortures, but that word was never 
 spoken. Their conduct implies, not merely a mental aberration, 
 "but also a callousness of feeling which has rarely been attained 
 in a long career of vice. Yet these were men who had often 
 shown in the most trying circumstances the highest and the most 
 heroic virtues. They were men whose com'age had never flinched 
 when persecution was raging around; men who had never 
 paltered with their consciences to attain the favours of a king ; 
 men whose self-devotion and zeal in their sacred calling had 
 seldom been surpassed ; men who in all the private relations of 
 life were doubtless amiable and afi'eotionate. It is not on them 
 that our blame should fall ; it is on the system that made them 
 what they were. They were but illustrations of the great truth, 
 that when men have come to regard a certain class of their 
 fellow-creatures as doomed by the Almighty to eternal and 
 excruciating agonies, and when their theology directs their minds 
 with intense and realizing earnestness to the contemplation of 
 such agonies, the result will be an indifference to the suffering of 
 those whom they deem the enemies of their God, as absolute as it 
 is perhaps possible for human nature to attain." 
 
 The reality of a belief, then, may be almost certainly 
 determined by its practical result. Centuries ago people 
 did. believe, and now we do not believe, that the world 
 swarms with devils, that the Creator of the world is a 
 hideous monster, choosing, for utterly undiscoverable 
 reasons, to bestow exceptional and often demoralizing 
 favours upon a very small minority of mankind, and 
 hunting all the rest through all manner of vices and 
 miseries in this world into unutterable and everlasting 
 
250 KATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 agonies in the next. Instead of believing this, the 
 belief in huge armies of demons subject to the com- 
 mands, and ever ready to do the bidding, of an 
 omnipresent chief, has been removed to "the region," 
 as Mr. Buckle calls it," of the shadow of death." The 
 devil and his angels are fading rapidly away into 
 metaphor; dreadful mental diseases, and even some 
 gigantic excesses of immorality, and uncontrollable 
 impulses to crime, are referred now, not to demoniacal 
 possessions, but to diseases of the brain. The belief in 
 witchcraft therefore has entirely passed away, because it 
 is entirely incompatible with other beliefs, which it may 
 safely be predicted will never give place to the old 
 superstition. But it is by no mere process of direct ar- 
 gument that this result has been obtained ; it is not the 
 force of logic alone that has altered the beliefs and con- 
 duct of men ; but rather their altered circumstances have 
 brought into a new light the arguments which in logic 
 were always valid, and the premisses of which were just 
 as compatible with the nature of man and the character 
 of God in the first century as they are in the last. Nor 
 is it difQcult to determine at least some of the causes 
 which have changed the circumstances, and so indirectly 
 altered the beliefs of civilized men. The growth of 
 physical science alone, though there were many other 
 causes, would account for the change. It is quite 
 impossible for anybody who has even the vaguest 
 knowledge of chemistry or physiology, or any other of 
 the sciences which come nearest to the life of man, to 
 believe in old women traversing the air on broomsticks ; 
 destroying the health and life of those they hate by 
 sitting in their own houses and melting little wax images 
 before their own fires ; or blighting human joy by an 
 
EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 251 
 
 Ugly look. Nobody now has the slightest dread of the 
 eyil eye ; and, on the other hand, nobody believes that 
 sicknesses are cured by Satanic remedies, and that men 
 can know more than their fellows only by becoming 
 enormously more wicked than they. The enlargement 
 of commerce, the increase of political freedom, the in- 
 numerable common interests, apart from theology, which 
 bind men together, even in spite of the differences in 
 their creeds — all such causes have combined to render 
 it impossible to tolerate those hideous cruelties and 
 cold-blooded murders which were perpetrated for cen- 
 turies in the name of Almighty God. 
 
 And even here we may take occasion to remark, 
 though every succeeding chapter of Mr. Lecky's book 
 furnishes additional proof, that no single name, such for 
 instance as a nation being called Jewish or Christian, 
 is sufficient to determine what those religious influences 
 are to which the nation is really subject; Keligion 
 cannot be imported from one country to another like 
 hogsheads of sugar. Names indeed may be imported, 
 and ceremonies, and even some doctrinal formularies ; 
 but it depends upon very complicated causes whether or 
 not the imported names will* stand for the same things 
 which they denoted in their earlier home, or the 
 ceremonies have the same significance, or the doctrinal 
 formularies be the expressions of any real experience or 
 beliefs. Papists and reformers, persecutors and their 
 ' victims, have alike belonged to Christendom ; and have 
 imagined they found their rules of life in the Christian 
 Scriptures and the honoured example of holy men. 
 Especially is it altogether uncertain what immediate 
 effect will follow the introduction of the Bible to a new 
 home. Whether the readers will direct their lives by 
 
252 EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 the Old Testament or the New ; whether their ideal man 
 will he found among the stern ministers of wrath that 
 hewed captive kings in pieces before the Lord, or in 
 Him who took upon Him the form of a servant and 
 went about doing good ; whether they will persecute 
 after the one model or save after the other — all this 
 depends not upon the Bible taken alone, but upon the 
 Bible taken together with all the forces, old and new, 
 endlessly combining, which determine the character of a 
 people. The circumstances of the Scotch clergy, for 
 instance, as Mr. Lecky has shown, rendered it inevitable 
 that they should really receive the Old Testament rather 
 than the New ; and therefore hold in abeyance such 
 newer teachings and more merciful examples as were 
 incompatible with the Jewish customs and laws, though 
 they held the place of honour in the Christian 
 Scriptures. 
 
 " Their circumstances made them liberals, and they naturally 
 sought to clothe their liberalism in a theological garb. They soon 
 discovered precedents for their rebellions in the history of the 
 judges and captains of the Jews ; and accordingly the union of an 
 intense theological, and an intense liberal feeling, made them 
 revert to the scenes of the Old Testament, to the sufferings and 
 also the conquests of the Jews, with an affection that seems now 
 almost inconceivable. Their whole theology took an Old 
 Testament cast. Their modes of thought, their very phraseology, 
 were derived from that source ; and the constant contemplation of 
 the massacres of Canaan, and of the provisions of the Levitical 
 code, produced its natural effect upon their minds."* 
 
 So, in general politics, it depended not alone on. the 
 Bible, but on the nature also of the government under 
 which men were living, whether they would learn the 
 
 *Vol. i., p. 146. 
 
EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 253 
 
 glory of regicides from the Old Testament, or the duty 
 of passive obedience from the New. Here also the Old 
 Testament commended itself to the political necessities 
 of the democratic Scotch, and the New to Anglican 
 conserTatives. 
 
 Magic and witchcraft are forms of the miraculous, 
 but they were by no means the only forms accepted by 
 the intellect and conscience of more credulous ages. 
 The miracles of the Church were as numerous as the 
 miracles of the devil ; and they were as readily believed 
 by men who had not as yet beheld the wondrous order 
 of the universe of God. "At present, nearly all 
 educated men receive an account of a miracle taking 
 place in their own day with an absolute and even 
 derisive incredulity, which dispenses with all examination 
 of the evidence. Although they may be entirely unable 
 to give a satisfactory explanation of some phenomena that 
 have taken place, they never on that account dream of 
 ascribing them to supernatural agency ; such an hypo- 
 thesis being, as they believe, altogether beyond the range 
 of reasonable discussion."* We have arrived at this 
 complete unbelief of supernatural interpositions through 
 a long course of preparations, and as the result not of 
 a direct disproof of the possibility or even the pro- 
 bability of miracles, but of the knowledge of laws which 
 we find operating uniformly and without interruption as 
 far as our experience has reached, and which render 
 miracles unnecessary, or even injurious. A disproof of 
 the possibility of a miracle is not often attempted by 
 those who believe in a personal God ; and, at any rate, 
 it has never been furnished. But none the less for that 
 
 * Vol. i., p. 1. 
 
264 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 have men come to believe that, instead of strengthening 
 their faith in a wise ruler of the universe, a miracle 
 wrought before their very eyes would almost seem to 
 them the herald of chaos. It would seem a ghastly 
 triumph of disorder ; it would bring into at least a 
 temporary doubt that great postulate on which all human 
 thought and all human action rest — the relation between 
 cause and effect. Nothing but the haze of long distance, 
 and the special necessities of the greatest crisis of the 
 world's history, can save their faith, or at least suspend 
 their disbelief, of those inexplicable wonders on which 
 Christianity itself is founded. 
 
 That Mr. Lecky himself does not deny the possibility 
 (and probably believes the reality) of the great Christian 
 miracles, is abundantly clear from his own words, and 
 at any rate the progress of genuine Kationalism by no 
 means involves the denial. 
 
 " When men first grasped," he says,* " the truth that the ten- 
 dency of the human mind was from polytheism to monotheism, 
 there were some who at once rushed on to atheism, considering 
 that to he a continuation of the same movement. The dishelief 
 in ghosts led many to materialism, and the discovery that man 
 was not the centre of all the contrivances of nature made not a 
 few deny final causes. Just so, science having shown that the 
 phenomena of nature do not result (as every one once supposed) 
 from direct and isolated acts of intervention, multitudes have 
 passed hy the impetus of the movement to the denial of the 
 possihility of miracles. To say that Omnipotence cannot reverse 
 the laws of His appointment is a contradiction in terms. To say 
 that an Infinite mind never modifies those laws for special 
 purposes, and in a manner that exceeds hoth human capacities 
 and human comprehension, is to make an assertion that is 
 unproved and contrary to analogy. To say that the metaphysical 
 
 * VoL i., pp. 198, 199 (foot-note). 
 
EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 255 
 
 conception of Infinity precludes the notion of miracles is tiseless, 
 because (as Mansel ajid others have shown) the creation of the 
 world is equally irreconcilable with that conception, and because 
 the existence of evil throws all such reasoning into hopeless 
 confusion. To say, in fine, that there was no use in miracles 
 accompanying a revelation in an early stage of society, is 
 completely to ignore the passion for the wonderful and the dim 
 perception of the moral which are the characteristics of such a 
 society. All these propositions flow naturally, but not legitimately, 
 out of the reaction against the ' government by miracle,' in which 
 Europe once believed. The logical consequences of the move- 
 ment are, I think, twofold. 1. The difficulty of proving miracles 
 satisfactorily is incalculably increased, because it is shown that, 
 in a certain phase of civilization, the belief in miracles necessarily 
 arises, and that many thousands, which are now universally 
 rejected, were then universally beheved, supported by a vast 
 amount of evidence, and entirely unconnected with imposition. 
 2. The essentially moral character which theology progressively 
 acquires renders miraculous evidence (except for a particular class 
 of minds) useless." 
 
 The credibility of the great miracles, the Incarnation 
 and the Eesurrection of Jesus Christ, depends upon the 
 consideration that He who cannot act at all without 
 limiting Himself to some mode of acting, may -well 
 submit to such limitations as may best reveal to men 
 His own goodness and the true dignity of human nature ; 
 and the fact also, that these miracles were not mere 
 physical marvels, but mighty instruments in the moral 
 development of mankind. It was, indeed, one chief 
 object of the teaching of Jesus to withdraw men from 
 a superstitious longing for mere wonders to a perception 
 of their spiritual significance as signs of a divine order, 
 a kingdom of heaven. ' But it must surely be admitted 
 that the credibility of an alleged miracle affirmed to be 
 wrought by God, diminishes directly, as its moral quality 
 and purpose diminish. The miracles of the " Gospel, of 
 
256 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 the Infancy," for instance, are utterly disbelieved, not 
 simply for want of evidence, but because they are 
 absolutely worthless ; they have no moral or spiritual 
 value. For exactly the same reason no prudent divine will 
 now offer the miracles of the Church as proofs of her divine 
 commission ; on the contrary, if he believe them at all, 
 he vrill strengthen the other proofs of her divine com- 
 mission as much as possible, in order that it may be 
 able to bear the enormous burden of the ecclesiastical 
 miracles. Nobody regards in the same way the pre- 
 servation of Jonah in the whale's body, and the raising 
 of the widow of Main's son from the dead. For the 
 one, all our gentlest affections plead ; for the other, we 
 do not care at all — not even enough to rouse ourselves 
 to deny it. Even if it be true, it does not touch one of 
 the necessities, or dangers, or griefs of our own lives. 
 The resurrection of the dead is not so much, even in 
 appearance, an interference with the laws of nature, as 
 an assertion that when those laws of nature with which 
 we are familiar, have exhausted themselves upon the 
 human body, the very man himself is still alive ; subject, 
 doubtless, still to divinely-appointed laws, but not de- 
 stroyed. But the conditions of human life in a whale's 
 belly are absolutely not worth knowing. 
 
 But any attempt to reduce the number or apologize 
 for the moral effect of miracles is itself a proof of the 
 silent change that has been wrought by enlarged ex- 
 perience, truer canons of criticism, and the growth of 
 the physical sciences. The mythopoeic age, in any 
 country and in any faith, requires an apology for the 
 absence of miracles. Mr. Grote has proved this with 
 absolute completeness in a region sufficiently remote 
 from religious prejudice to admit of a close approxima- 
 
RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 257 
 
 tion to impartiality. He has detected Greek myths in 
 all stages of their production ; and endless variations of 
 divine interposition according to the mental character- 
 istics, or geographical position, or political partialities 
 of those who created both their gods and a history of 
 divine achievements. He has shown us that so far from 
 general belief being any proof of the reality of . super- 
 natural interpositions, it is in certain ages, and certain 
 stages of religious development, a very clear warning 
 that such interpositions are so eagerly desired, that any 
 assertion that they have taken place would be received 
 •without evidence at all. And this in Greek history is 
 exactly similar to what characterized the period before 
 the Reformation. In the writings of the fathers we find 
 miracles spoken of as existing in profusion. 
 
 "If we pass from the fathers into the middle ages, we find 
 ourselves in an atmosphere that was dense and charged with the 
 supernatural. The demand for miracles was almost boundless, 
 and the supply was equal to the demand. Men of extraordinary 
 sanctity seemed naturally and habitually to obtain the power of 
 performing them, and their lives are crowded with their achieve- 
 ments, which were attested by the highest sanction of the Church. 
 Nothing could be more common than for a holy man to be lifted 
 up &om the floor in the midst of his devotions, or to be visited by 
 the Virgia or by an angel. There was scarcely a town that could 
 not show some relic that had cured the sick, or some image that 
 had opened and shut its eyes,, or bowed its head to an earnest 
 worshipper. It was somewhat more extraordinary, but not in the 
 least incredible, that the fish should have thronged to the shore 
 to hear St. Anthony preach, or that it should be necessary to cut 
 the hair of the crucifix at Burgos once a month, or that the Vii'gin 
 of the Pillar, at Saragossa, should, at the prayer of one of her 
 worshippers, have restored a leg that had been amputated. Men 
 who were afilicted with apparently hopeless disease, started in a 
 moment into perfect health when brought iuto contact with a reUo 
 of Christ or of the Virgin. The virtue of such relics radiated in 
 blessings all around them. Glorious visions heralded their 
 
 S 
 
258 
 
 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPB. 
 
 discovery, and angels have transported them through the air. If 
 a missionary went abroad among the heatliens, supernatural signs 
 confounded his opponents, and made the powers of darkness fly 
 before his steps. If a Christian prince unsheathed his sword in 
 an ecclesiastical cause, apostles had been known to combat with 
 his army, and avenging miracles to scatter his enemies. If an 
 unjust suspicion attached to an innocent man, he had immediately 
 recourse to an ordeal which cleared his character and- condemned 
 Ms accusers. AU this was going on habitually in every part of 
 Europe without exciting the smallest astonishment or scepticism. 
 Those who know how thoroughly the supernatural element per- 
 vades the old lives of the saints, may form some notion of the 
 multitude of miracles that were related and generally believed 
 from the fact that M. Guizot has estimated the number of these 
 lives, accumulated in the Bollandist Collection, at about twenty* 
 five thousand. Yet this was but one department of miracles. It 
 does not include the thousands of miraculous images and pictiu-es 
 that were operating throughout Christendom, and the countless 
 apparitions and miscellaneous prodigies that were taking place in 
 every country, and on all occasions. Whenever a saint was 
 canonized, it was necessary to prove that he had worked miracles ; 
 but except on these occasions miraculous accounts seem never to 
 have been questioned. The most educated, as well as the most 
 ignorant, habitually resorted to the supernatural as the simplest 
 explanation of every difficulty."* 
 
 Why is it that all these miraculous interpositions are 
 now regarded with such " derisive incredulity," that 
 even devout believers in the sacred Scriptures never hear 
 of a modern miracle without disgust, without feehng 
 that it is an impertinence, an attempt to rival the glories 
 of that wondrous era when the religion of Jesus Christ 
 made its first entrance into the world ? Many Christian 
 people indeed still believe in miracles, wrought before 
 their own eyes, in their own day. They believe that in 
 consequence of their own prayers, Grod alters the course 
 of the seasons, sends rain in drought, and fair weather 
 
 * Vol. 1, pp. 153—155. 
 
RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 259 
 
 after rain ; they believe tha,t for the same reason He 
 supersedes had ship-building, and delivers sailors in 
 crazy vessels from the violence of tempests ; they believe 
 that in like manner He will so far reverse the operation 
 of ordinary causes, that He will grant in answer to prayer 
 an abundant harvest, even though the sowing has been 
 scanty, or the soil impoverished by neglect or ignorance. 
 Even great institutions — great at any rate in the large- 
 ness of their operations, and the magnitude of their 
 liabilities — are supported by no other means than an 
 appeal on the one hand to the miracle-working power of 
 God, and on the other to the extreme credulity of the 
 British public. Such appeals are never entirely in vaip ; 
 for there is a large number of people who are grieved 
 and terrified at the progress of reason, who mourn over 
 even their own subjection to the spirit of the age, and 
 who imagine that the worth of their faith is determined 
 by the mere quantity of what they believe. But though 
 the reports of such institutions are utterly ridiculous, 
 even when they are not blasphemous, even those who 
 compile them, and who possibly also believe them, are 
 so far mastered by the power of rationalism that they 
 dare not call a miracle by its own name. The mode of 
 feeding the orphans in a large establishment near Bristol 
 differs in no essential particular from the mode of feeding 
 the five thousand, unless indeed it be an essential differ- 
 ence that the Bristol establishment begins without even 
 the loaves and fishes. If people can obtain what they 
 want by kneeling down to pray for it, instead of by going 
 into the market and buying it ; if they can get diseases 
 cured by prayer, instead of by medical skill and medi- 
 cine ; wherein does all this differ from the unwasting 
 barrel of meal and cruse of oil, or the effects of the 
 
 s2 
 
260 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 prayer of Elijah, " Lord, my God, let the spirit of 
 this child come unto him again, that he may live?" 
 But people who pray for rain, and who profess to support 
 enormous households without any human resources, 
 know perfectly well that they would be regarded as hope- 
 less lunatics if they pretended for a single moment that 
 they possessed the power of working miracles. But the 
 very fact that they are compelled to repudiate the proper 
 name for the thing they think they possess, is an impor- 
 tant testimony to the overwhelming power of Kationalism. 
 Why is it then that the belief in modern miracles has 
 so completely died away, and that even no amount of 
 eyidence can persuade us that any miracle whatever has 
 been wrought for at least several centuries ? One reason 
 is, that we have arrived at far better canons of criticism 
 and tests of historical proof. It is not enough for us to 
 know that some particular assertion has been made ; we 
 must be satisfied that they who make the assertion 
 have some fair means of knowing the. truth of what they 
 affirm. We require to be satisfied not only that some 
 particular event might have happened, but that there is 
 conclusive reason to believe that it did happen. Again, 
 the industrious prosecutions of physical science have led 
 men further and further into the region of divine opera- 
 tions, and nowhere have they been able to discover, in 
 any period of modern research, even the slightest devia- 
 tions from the appointed order. Moreover, their re- 
 searches have compelled them to admit that there is 
 scarcely any evidence so untrustworthy as the first report 
 of the senses. Very few people indeed are competent 
 to say what they have seen with their eyes, or heard 
 with their ears ; and men whose habits of observation 
 have been cultivated with the utmost care, and protected 
 
EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 261 
 
 with the most scupulous anxiety from any possibility of 
 bias, are not likely to receive as sufficient proof of mira- 
 cles the second-hand reports of superstitious and ignorant 
 observers, whose moral characteristics incline them not 
 to doubt the presence, but to doubt the absence of a 
 supernatural interposition. But there is yet another, 
 and perhaps a better reason still, for the complete dis- 
 credit into which all but the very greatest miracles have 
 fallen. It is a reason furnished rather by the conscience 
 than the intellect. Miracles have ceased to be expected, 
 because they have ceased to be desired. Men love wis- 
 dom far more than power ; they believe that order, fore- 
 knowledge, and a complete pre-arrangement, sufficient 
 for all possible emergencies, are immeasurably more 
 divine than any manifestations, however appalling or 
 even benevolent, of mere caprice. People feel that if 
 miracles were ever necessary, and they are often very 
 willing to confess that they once, were, they are cer- 
 tainly unnecessary now. The gift of healing was 
 immeasurably less useful, or at any rate would be 
 immeasurably less useful now, than medical and surgical 
 skill. Even if it were more -immediately available for 
 the cure of diseases, it would tend directly to repress 
 that effi)rt, and render unnecessary that thorough culture 
 of all the faculties, without which all real greatness is 
 impossible. The same may be said of all the other 
 special gifts of the apostolic age ; they could be neces- 
 sary only when men were ignorant and weak, and if 
 they were continued beyond that period of weakness 
 they would tend only to perpetuate it. 
 
 Few educated persons therefore now in this country 
 believe in miracles, excepting so far as to admit that, in 
 the infancy of the human race, it is certainly possible 
 
262 RiTIONAlISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 that God could have wrought them, but enormously 
 difficult to prove that He ever actually did ; and that in 
 the greatest moral crisis of human history, he gave to 
 men a revelation of Himself which involved a departure 
 from the ordinary laws of nature. But a yet clearer 
 proof, if possible, of the prevalence of Kationalism is to 
 be found in the fact that the very meaning of the word 
 miracle has been changed, so that the word is no longer 
 used to indicate an inversion, or even a temporary sus- 
 pension of the laws of nature. On the contrary, the 
 sphere of law has been enlarged so as to include mira- 
 cles, which are accordingly regarded not as breaches of 
 laws we know, but as examples of the operation of laws 
 with which we are not yet familiar. 
 
 " We find also," says Mr. Leoky,* " even among the supporters 
 of the evidential school, a strong tendency to meet the ration- 
 alists, as it were, half-way, — to maintain that miracles are valid 
 proofs, but that they do not necessarily imply the notion of a 
 violation of natural law with which they had been so long asso- 
 ciated They are, it is said, performed simply by the application 
 of natural means guided by supernatural knowledge. The idea 
 of interference can present no difficulty to any one who admits 
 human liberty ; for those who acknowledge that liberty must hold 
 that man has a certain power of guiding and controlling the laws 
 of matter, that he can of his own free will produce effects which 
 would not have been produced without his intervention, and that 
 in proportion as his knowledge of the laws of nature advances his 
 power of adapting them to his purposes is increased. That mind 
 can influence matter is itself one of the laws of nature. To adapt 
 and modify general laws to special purposes is the occupation 
 and the characteristic of every intelligence, and to deny this 
 power to divine intelligence seems but little removed from atheism. 
 It is to make the Deity the only torpid mind in the universe. 
 There is, therefore, it is said, nothing improbable in the belief 
 that Omniscience, by the selection of natural laws of which we 
 
 * Vol. i., pp. 194—196. 
 
RATIONALISM IN EtJEOPE. 263 
 
 are ignorant, could accomplish all those acts which we call mira- 
 culous. According to this notion a miracle would not differ, 
 generically, from a human act, though it would still be strictly 
 available for evidential purposes. Miracles would thus be sepa- 
 rated from a conception with wHch almost all the controversialists 
 of the last century had identified them, and which is peculiarly 
 repugnant to the tendencies of our age." 
 
 It will scarcely be denied, even by tliose who think 
 the prevailing Eationalism too undiscriminating in its 
 rejection of the miraculous, that the God of the modern 
 Church is a far more glorious Being than the capricious 
 divinity who was supposed to be for ever interfering with 
 the affairs of His creatures, and neutralizing the effects 
 of His own imperfect foresight. 
 
 The Creator Himself, indeed, has been ever the same; 
 but the piety and morality of a man is determined, not 
 only by what his God is, but by what has been revealed 
 or discovered of the divine perfections. So long as men 
 " esteemed" God " to be" capricious, " to them He ivas" 
 capricious ; and all their thought and action were based 
 upon that misbelief. Even the Scriptures are not with- 
 out the relics of that ignorance which was inevitable in 
 the world's infancy ; though they bear a wonderful testi- 
 mony to the eternal order in that region where it is most 
 important — the region of morality. The mountains may 
 depart and the hills be removed, but not the faithfulness 
 or righteousness of God ; not the deep, wide, everlasting 
 difference between right and wrong. That God should 
 change the material for the sake of the spiritual, is by 
 no means inconceivable and might be glorious ; but it is 
 far more wonderful and glorious that His infinite wisdom 
 has from the very beginning provided that the material 
 shall ever be the minister of the true, spirit, and shall 
 need no change. The belief of miracles, indeed, with 
 
264 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 a very few grand exceptions, marking the great crises in 
 the history of the world, has utterly vanished ; but in 
 place of it there is a far surer belief in a living God, 
 who is able to govern without miracles, and whose en- 
 during order is the one comprehensive wonder of the 
 universe. Even ^the belief in miracles was an early 
 triumph of the very same spirit which has now rooted 
 out the belief ; it was wiser and nearer to the truth than 
 that fetishism which it superseded. But faith in a 
 living Person governing the world would itself become 
 injurious, if we were suffered to believe that He is alto- 
 gether such a one as ourselves. 
 
 " There is one other subject," says Mr. Leoky,* " of great 
 importance which is naturally suggested by the movement we 
 have been consideriug. We have seen how profoundly it has 
 altered the character of Christian Churches. It has changed not 
 only the outward form and manifestations, but the habits of 
 thought, the religious atmosphere which was the medium through 
 which all events were contemplated, and by which all reasonings 
 were refracted. No one can doubt that if the modes of thought 
 now prevaiUng on these subjects, even in Roman CathoHc 
 countries, could have been presented to the mind of a Christian 
 of the tweKth century, he would have said that so complete an 
 alteration would involve the absolute destruction of Christianity. 
 As a matter of fact, most of these modifications were forced upon 
 the reluctant Church by the pressure from without, and were 
 specially resisted and denounced by the bulk of the clergy. They 
 were represented as subversive of Christianity. The doctrine 
 that religion could be destined to pass through successive phases 
 of development was pronounced to be emphatically unchristian. 
 The ideal Church was always in the past ; and immutability, if 
 not retrogression, was deemed the condition of life. We can now 
 judge this resistance by the clear light of experience. Dogmatic 
 systems have, it is true, been materially weakened ; they no longer 
 exercise a controlling influence over the curr&nt of afiairs. Per- 
 
 • 
 
 * Vol. L, pp. 203—205. 
 
EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 265 
 
 secution, religious wars, absorbing controversies, sacred art, and 
 theological literature, wliioh. once indicated a passionate interest 
 in dogmatic questions, have passed away or become comparatively 
 uninfluential. Ecclesiastical power throughout Europe has been 
 everywhere weakened, and weakened in each nation in pro- 
 portion to its intellectual progress. If we were to judge the 
 present position of Christianity by the tests of ecclesiastical 
 history, if we were to measure it by the orthodox zeal of the 
 great doctors of the past, we might well look upon its prospects 
 with the deepest despondency and alarm. The spirit of the 
 fathers has inoontestably faded. The days of Athanasius and 
 Augustine have passed away never to return. The whole course 
 and tendency of thought is ilowing in anotlier direction. The 
 controversies of bygone centuries ring with a strange hoUowness 
 on the ear. But if, turning from ecclesiastical historians, we 
 apply the exclusively moral tests which the New Testament so 
 invariably and so emphatically enforces, if we ask whether Chris- 
 tianity has ceased to produce the hving fruits of love and charity 
 and zeal for truth, the conclusion we should arrive at would be 
 very different. If it be true Christianity to dive with a passionate 
 charity into the darkest recesses of misery and of vice, to irrigate 
 every quarter of the^ earth with the fertihzing stream of an almost 
 boundless benevolence, and to include all the sections of humanity 
 in the circle of an intense and efficacious sympathy ; if it be true 
 Christianity to destroy or weaken the barriers which had sepa- 
 rated class from class and nation from nation, to free war from its 
 harshest elements, and to make a consciousness of essential 
 equality and of a genuine fraternity dominate over all accidental 
 differences ; if it be, above all, true Christianity to cultivate a 
 love of truth for its own sake, a spirit of candour and of tolerance 
 towards those with whom we differ, — if these be the marks of a 
 true and healthy Christianity, then never since the days of the 
 Apostles has it been so vigorous as at present, and the decline of 
 dogmatic systems and of clerical influence has been a measure if 
 not a cause of its advance." 
 
 Mr. Lecky's third chapter, " -Sisthetic, Scientific, and 
 Moral Developments of Eationalism," is admirably 
 written, and in every respect full of interest ; but what 
 he says of moral development is worthy of very special 
 
266 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 attention. It is an introduction to the long chapter on 
 persecution ; which is a history of oft-told horrors, 
 written with unflinching justice, with sensitive humanity, 
 and with exulting joy that both the emotional and logical 
 antecedents of persecution are destroyed for ever. That 
 so dreadful a curse should have blighted all Christendom 
 for centuries, in spite of the divine gentleness of Jesus 
 Christ, can be accounted for only by the principles that 
 persecutors had adopted, or the moral atmosphere they 
 breathed. The great emotional antecedent of perse- 
 cution is to be found in the teaching of the early church 
 concerning the future world. It is quite impossible for 
 us to realize the effect of that teaching when it was 
 really believed : it is even difficult for us to believe that 
 men of heroic virtue and singular unselfishness should 
 have dared to offer it to the world. We read with 
 amazement such sermons as Dr. Pusey's " On Ever- 
 lasting Punishment;" astonished that a generous man 
 can seem to find a sort of righteous satisfaction in what, 
 at best, could be only the most appalling mystery of the 
 universe. But Dr. Pusey's sermon is mere child's play 
 compared with the fiery denunciations of men like Ter- ' 
 tullian. In a passage quoted by Mr. Lecky,* he actually 
 promises the spectacle of the everlasting agonies of the 
 damned as a compensation to those who were compelled 
 to abstain from the enjoyments of the games and thea- 
 tres of the heathen. 
 
 " ' What,' he exclaimed, ' shall be the magnitude of that scene ? 
 How shall I wonder ? How shall I laugh ? How shall I re- 
 joice ? How shall I triumph when I behold so many and such 
 illustrious kings, who were said to have mounted into heaven, 
 groaning with Jupiter their god in the lowest darkness of hell ! 
 
 * Chap, i., p. 357; quoted from Tertullian, De Spectaculis, cap. xxx. 
 
EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 267 
 
 Then shall the soldiers who had persecixted the name of Christ 
 burn in more cruel fire than any they had kindled for the saints. 
 . . Then shall the tragedians pour forth iu their own mis- 
 
 fortune more piteous cries than those with which they had made 
 the theatre to resound, wliile their comedian's powers shall be 
 better seen as he becomes more flexible by the heat. Then shall 
 the driver of the circus stand forth to view all blushing in his 
 flaming chariot, and the gladiators pierced, not by spears, but by 
 darts of fire. . . . Compared with such spectacles, with such 
 subjects of triumph as these, what can prsetor or consul, qn»stor 
 or pontiff, afford ? and even now faith can bring them near, 
 imagination can depict them as present.' " 
 
 In due time such teacliing was impressed upon the 
 heart and thought of the vulgar by dreadful pictures ; 
 and for the most refined it imparts a terrible repul- 
 siveness even to the noblest poetry of the Catholic 
 world. It was urged upon men as a fitting subject for 
 frequent and long-continued meditation. The horrors 
 of the future state of sinners was to them a sort of 
 measure of their own deep abhorrence of that sin which 
 deserved such severity of punishment. They were told 
 that if hell seemed to them too much, it could only be 
 because sin seemed too little ; and just because they had 
 so inadequate a notion of the evil of sin did they need 
 the protection against temptation which might be fur- 
 nished them by terror. No cruelty that has ever cursed 
 the world can approach in diabolical ingenuity the 
 mediaeval tortures inflicted by the Church ; and the 
 only excuse that can be ofl'ered for them is the fact that 
 they were but poor copies of the far more dreadful tor- 
 ments inflicted by Almighty God. Nor was the awful 
 effect of the teaching concerning the future state more 
 than very slightly alleviated by the more generous 
 Gospel which accompanied it. For, to begin with, 
 there was no Gospel for all. There was no Gospel for 
 
268 RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 
 
 the unbaptized ; even among the baptized there was no 
 Gospel for the unelect. And when two divinities of 
 equal power, one infinitely kind and the other infinitely 
 malicious, are set before men for their worship, all his- 
 tory testifies that the good God will be neglected, and 
 the god-devil will have all the honour. For men will 
 argue that they must be on their guard against the 
 devil, — they must conciliate him and avert his wrath ; 
 for the slightest failure in their homage must involve 
 swift ruin, even if they are not tormented for the mere 
 amusement of divine cruelty. But the good God may 
 be trusted to do no harm. He will forgive those neg- 
 lects which the multiplied cares and anxieties of man- 
 kind render almost inevitable. Above all. He will 
 remember the cruel exactions of their infernal oppressor, 
 and be Himself the less exacting. When the two deities 
 are united in the same person, the same inexorable logic 
 will still apply with equal or even greater force. The 
 devil will be worshipped, the God will be forgotten. 
 Perfect fear will cast out love. In the continual contem- 
 plation of sufi'ering the hekrt will grow hard, and men will 
 learn to inflict torment on one another without remorse. 
 The doctrine of everlasting torment still lingers in 
 form, and even with some small realization, among the 
 sterner minds of Christendom; men of abstractions, 
 who carry dogmatic premisses to their last conclusions 
 almost without a pang. But even they scarcely venture 
 to teach that spirits are tortured in literal fire. For the 
 most part the doctrine itself has passed away ; destroyed 
 not simply by truer interpretations of Scripture, but by 
 habits of thought and methods of government with 
 which the doctrine of everlasting hell fire is utterly and 
 for ever incompatible. The penal code, especially, has 
 
EATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 269 
 
 received the most careful consideration from statesmen 
 and philanthropists ; men who were guided by conscience 
 and reason, and not by dogmatic theology. Though this 
 good work itself was retarded by the prevalence of the 
 mediaeval doctrine of the future state, and would have 
 continued wholly impossible if secular government had 
 been in the hands of the clergy, nevertheless the 
 punishment of criminals has been rendered more and 
 more remedial, less and less revengeful and expiatory. 
 Men realize, as they become more civilized and intelli- 
 gent, the intensity of the suffering they inflict, and the 
 innumerable differences of crimes. They perceive that 
 in every case the worst sinner has been also, in some 
 measure, sinned against. They recognize the unspeak- 
 able value of a human spirit, and that no folly could be 
 greater than to waste a living man. They treat an evil 
 doer as they would treat a priceless gem that had some- 
 how become flawed, well knowing that no part of the 
 jewel may be thrown away. The recklessness of human 
 life which characterizes semi-barbarous legislation has 
 given place to a tenderness which is even in some danger 
 of becoming excessive and hysterical ; but the change is 
 in the right direction, and is based on the true foun- 
 dation of a high sense of the dignity of human nature. 
 While a truer theology and nobler ethics have rendered 
 this change possible, the change in modern penal legis- 
 lation has re-acted most favourably on ethics and theo- 
 logy. It is preposterous for those to hesitate about 
 hanging a man for stealing a sheep, who believe that 
 God, the fountain of all justice and law, would burn 
 him in hell for ever for stealing a penny. It is ridicu- 
 lous to attempt any accurate adjustment of punishments 
 if all crimes are sins, and all sins deserve the infliction 
 
270 EATIONAIiISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 of endless torment. It is absurd to make our punish- 
 ments remedial if the divine example assures us that 
 the great end of punishment is not reformation, but 
 reyenge. Modern statesmen may not perhaps be pre- 
 pared to deny in words the mediaeval doctrine ; but they 
 adopt the far more effective method of denying it in 
 every one of their acts, and denying it most emphatically 
 in those acts -which are most solemn. They simply 
 reverse in their own government what they have been 
 taught to believe is the mode of the divine government. 
 They reverse it with loathing and scorn, as a horrid 
 relic of barbarism which would be a disgrace to civiliza- 
 tion. The social theories of modern life and the me- 
 diaeval doctrine of the future state may live together in 
 form, but never in reality ; one only will be realized, 
 and the other will be in abeyance. 
 
 The decay of the doctrine of the endless torment of 
 the wicked in a literal fire has removed the greatest of 
 the emotional antecedents of persecution ; similar causes 
 have been in continual operation to remove the logical 
 antecedents. The chief of these was the doctrine of 
 exclusive salvation, which is well stated, and without 
 exaggeration, by Mr. Lecky. It included the doctrine 
 of the absolute necessity of baptism. 
 
 " ' Be assured,' %vrites St. Fulgentius, ' and doubt not that not 
 only men wlio have obtained the use of their reason, but also 
 little children who have begun to live in their mother's womb and 
 have there died, or who, having been just born, have passed away 
 from the world without the sacrament of holy baptism, adminis- 
 tered in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, must be 
 punished by the eternal torture of undying fire ; for although 
 they have committed no sin by their own will, they have never- 
 theless drawn with them the condemnation of original sin, by 
 their carnal conception and nativity.' It wiU be remembered that 
 
RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 271 
 
 these saints, while maintaining that infants wliose existence was 
 but for a moment descended into eternal fire on account of an 
 apple that was eaten four thousand years before they were born, 
 maintained also that the creation and the death of those infants 
 were the direct, personal, and uncontrolled acts of the Deity."* 
 
 " But the scope of the doctrine we are considering was not 
 confined to unbaptized children ; it extended also to aU adults 
 who were external to the Church. If the whole human race 
 existed under a sentence of condemnation which ' could only be 
 removed by connection with Christianity ; and if this sentence 
 were so stringent that even the infant was not exempt from its 
 effects, it was natural that the adult heathen who added his 
 personal transgressions to the guilt of Adam should be doomed 
 at last to perdition. Nor did the fathers who constructed the 
 early systems of theology at all shrink from the consequence. At 
 a time when the Christian Church formed but an infinitesimal 
 fraction of the community ;' at a time when almost all the mem- 
 bers who composed it were themselves converts from paganism, 
 and reckoned among the pagans those who were bound to them 
 by the closest ties of gratitude and affection, the great majority of 
 the fathers dehberately taught that the entire pagan world was 
 doomed to that state of punishment which they invariably de- 
 scribed as hteral and undying fire. In any age and under any 
 tjircumstances such a doctrine must seem inexpressibly shocking ; 
 but it appears most pecuharly so when we consider that the con- 
 vert who accepted it, and who, with a view to his own felicity, 
 proclaimed the system of which he believed it to form a part to 
 be a message of good tidings, must have acquiesced in the eternal 
 perdition of the mother who had borne him, of the father upon 
 whose knees he had played, of the friends who were associated 
 with the happy years of childhood and early manhood, of the 
 immense mass of his fellow-countrymen, and of all those heroes 
 and sages who by their lives or precepts had first kindled a moral 
 enthusiasm within his breast. All these were doomed by one 
 sweeping sentence. Nor were they alone in tlieir condemnation. 
 The heretics, no matter how trivial may have been their error, 
 were reserved for the same fearful fate. The Church, according 
 to the favourite image of the fathers, was a solitary ark floating 
 
 Vol. i, pp 397, 398. 
 
272 EATIONALISM IN EUKOPE. 
 
 upon a boundless sea of ruin. Witliin its pale there was sal- 
 vation ; without it salvation was impossible. ' If any one out of 
 Noah's ark could escape the deluge,' wrote St. Cyprian, ' he who 
 is out of the Church may also escape.' ' Without this house,' 
 said Origen, ' that is without the Church, no one is saved.' ' No 
 one,' said St. Augustin, ' cometh to salvation and eternal life 
 except he who hath Christ for his head ; but no one can have 
 Christ for his head except he that is iu His body, the Church.' 
 ' Hold most firmly,' added St. Fulgentius, ' and doubt not that 
 not only all pagans, but also all Jews, heretics, and scliismatics 
 who depart from this present life outside the Catholic Church, are 
 about to go into eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.' 
 So prominent and so unquestionable was this doctrine deemed, that 
 the council of Carthage, in the fourth century, made it one of the 
 test questions put to every bishop, before ordination."* 
 
 It is quite impossible to exaggerate the mischievous 
 effects of this terrible doctrine ; it is indeed difficult to 
 determine whether it was more injurious to the intellect, 
 or the conscience, or the affections. The mercy of its 
 salvation aggravated, instead of palliating, the ferocity 
 of its curse. It elevated mere ceremonies above spiritual 
 life, and dogmatic orthodoxy above morality. It mul- 
 tiplied pious frauds ; "it rendered universal that species 
 of falsehood which is termed misrepresentation, and which 
 consists mainly of the suppression of opposing facts ;" 
 and it utterly crushed the earnestness of inquiry, which 
 is ■ the only bulwark against the encroachments of error. 
 
 " The considerations I have adduced in the first part of this 
 chapter," says Mr. Lecky,f " will be sufficient to show how in- 
 jurious have been the effects of the doctrine of exclusive salvation. 
 We have still, however, one consequence to examine, before which 
 aU others fade into insignificance. I mean, of course, religious 
 persecution. This, which is perhaps the most fearful of all the 
 evUs that men have inflicted upon their fellows, is the direct 
 practical result of the principles we have hitherto considered in 
 
 Vol. i., pp. 412—415. t Vol. ii., pp. 1- 
 
 8. 
 
EATIONAIISM IN EUROPE. 273 
 
 their speculative aspect. If men believe with an intense and 
 realizing faith that their own view of a disputed question is true 
 beyond all possibility of mistake ; if they further believe that 
 those who adopt other views wiU. be doomed by the Almighty to 
 an eternity of misery which, with the same moral disposition, but 
 with a different belief, they would have escaped, these men will, 
 sooner or later, persecute to the full extent of then- power. If 
 you speak to them of the physical and mental suffering which 
 persecution produces, or of the sincerity and unselfish heroism of 
 its victims, they will reply that such arguments rest altogether 
 on the inadequacy of your realization of the doctrine they believe- 
 What suffering that man can inflict can be comparable to the 
 eternal misery of all who embrace the doctrine of the heretic ? 
 What claim can human virtues have to our forbearance, if the 
 Almighty punishes the mere profession of error as a crime of the 
 deepest turpitude ? If you encountered a lunatic who, in his 
 frenzy, was inflicting on multitudes around him a death of the 
 most prolonged and excruciating agony, would you not feel 
 justified in arresting his career by every means in your power, — 
 by taking his life if you could not otherwise attain your object ? 
 But if you knew that this man was inflicting not temporal but 
 eternal death, if he was not a gmltless though dangerous madman, 
 but one whose conduct you believed to involve the most heinous 
 criminality, would you not act with stiU less compunction or 
 hesitation ? Arguments from expediency, though they may in- 
 duce men under some special circumstances to refrain from 
 persecuting, will never make them adopt the principle of tolera- 
 tion. In the first place, those who beheve that the reUgious 
 service of the heretic is an act positively offensive to the Deity 
 will always feel disposed to put down that act if it is in their 
 power, even though they cannot change the mental disposition 
 from which it springs. Iji the next place, they wiU soon perceive 
 that the intervention of the civil ruler can exercise almost as 
 much influence upon belief as upon profession.'' 
 
 Mr. Lecky's chapter on Persecution is admirably 
 written ; and is valuable, above all, because it does not 
 waste indignation on men, but on the evil systems and 
 mischievous dogmas by which they were fatally misled. 
 It is not the persecutors, but the principles which justify 
 
 T 
 
274 EATIONALISM IN EUKOPE. 
 
 and even demand persecution, which are rightly held up 
 to the loathing and execration of mankind. The doc- 
 trine of the endless torment of the -wicked hardens the 
 heart ; the doctrine of exclusive salvation deadens the 
 conscience and stupefies the intellect. These doctrines, 
 therefore, are to be utterly repudiated ; their deep im- 
 morality, their absolute unreasonableness, their blas- 
 phemous affront to Almighty wisdom and love, are 
 without ceasing to be demonstrated and proclaimed. It 
 is not even of bad men that we need to be most afraid, 
 but of those principles of morals or theology which can- 
 not fail to make bad all who accept them. That these 
 doctrines are rapidly dying out, is happily indisputable. 
 It matters almost nothing that they remain in creeds 
 and formularies : it matters little even that men can be 
 found who still imagine that they believe them. The 
 true test and measure of their being believed, is the 
 effects they produce ; and now, in England, their effects 
 are ridiculous and suicidal. But still, as always, they 
 are wholly intolerable ; subversive of liberty and honesty, 
 in nation and individual, in conduct and thought. 
 
 It is superfluous to ask whether they are believed. 
 Some men partly believe them, and therefore they per- 
 secute ; they rob Professor Jowett, for instance, as long 
 as they are permitted, of some few hundreds a year. They 
 refuse to pay to the Bishop of Natal his salary, because 
 they really believe that that form of stealing is not so 
 dangerous to the soul as heresy. But in England there 
 are almost as many heretics as there are individuals, 
 and nobody cares. No Anglican priest or bishop dare 
 try to put in force the ecclesiastical canons of his own 
 church. He might excommunicate and curse ; and the 
 only effect would be that men would laugh in his face. 
 
RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 275 
 
 He might refuse the sacraments ; but the clergyman of 
 the next parish would administer them — and if a man 
 could not get the sacraments at all he would contentedly 
 go without them. Jews were burnt to death in olden 
 times, now they have seats in Parliament. The orthodox 
 marry and are given in marriage to heretics ; and the 
 infidel who denies every one of the thirty-nine Articles, 
 and repudiates the three creeds, is buried " in sure and 
 certain hope of a resurrection to eternal life." It is 
 more dangerous now to be a street beggar or an organ- 
 grinder, than to be a heresiarch. " If it were a matter 
 of wrong or wicked lewdness, ye wrangling eccle- 
 siastics, reason would that I should bear with you ; but 
 if it be a question of words and names, and of your law, 
 look ye to it, for I will be no judge of such matters." 
 So speaks that great Gallio, the spirit of the age, the 
 Eationalism of modern Europe — and " cares for none of 
 these things." 
 
 The remaining chapters of Mr. Lecky's book are on 
 " The Secularization of Politics," and " The Industrial 
 History of Eationalism." So far are politics secularized 
 that we almost fail to perceive' that they ever needed 
 secularizing. People now-a-days are annoyed at any 
 attempt to connect religion with the ordinary affairs of 
 the nation. Even the State Church exists on suffer- 
 ance ; not by divine right, but by political expediency, 
 and on condition of being the docile, submissive slave of 
 the civil power. High Churchmen hate the alliance 
 almost more bitterly than the dissenting sects ; knowing 
 that they lose far more of spiritual strength and old 
 ecclesiastical supremacy, than .they gain of earthly 
 splendour and possessions. The most utterly imbecile 
 and absolutely powerless body in all England is the 
 
 T 2 
 
276 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 Convocation of the Clergy ; a body that even to 
 Henry VIII. could dare to suggest that if the laws of 
 the Church and the laws of the State should unhappily 
 be at variance, the laws of the State should be changed. 
 The ecclesiastical courts, that were once the terror of 
 the land, that were more powerful and far more mer- 
 ciless than the secular tribunals, are now the laughing- 
 stock of the nation ; and it needs more courage to apply 
 ecclesiastical law than to defy it. And yet the old 
 system alone is compatible with the old theory upon 
 which it was based, and which still lingers in words and 
 formularies. The proof that the old belief is dead is 
 not to be found in any verbal denial, any formal protest, 
 but in the whole spirit and structure of modern life. 
 
 Nor is the progress of Eationalism less obvious or less 
 beneficial in its relation to commerce. The commercial 
 spirit is the extreme opposite of the ascetic spirit. It 
 is bent upon making life happy, and securing the utmost 
 advantage of the things that are seen and temporal. It 
 is opposed, on almost every side, to the mediaeval theo- 
 logy, and must utterly perish if that theology should 
 ever again prevail. Especially has it destroyed two of 
 the prominent doctrines of the old religion — the doctrine 
 of usury and the doctrine of almsgiving. Now, indeed, 
 a vague distinction is drawn between usury and interest ; 
 and so the attempt is made to save the credit of Jewish 
 and Christian antiquity. But the distinction is in itself 
 utterly delusive, and was, at any rate, entirely repudiated 
 by the ancient church. Under the pressure of expanding 
 commerce, one concession after another was obtained ; 
 but each and all of them were completely inconsistent 
 with the teaching of the fathers and the law of the 
 church. Popes damned the usurer, but kings borrowed 
 
EATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 277 
 
 his money ; and even the societies that were founded to 
 render needless the ruinous assistance of pitiless money- 
 lenders, were compelled to take interest under another 
 name. The Church cursed the lender ; the wiser world, 
 when it cursed at all, cursed the borrower. The Church 
 lauded recklessness and poverty, the world forethought 
 and thrift. Loans being left more and more to the 
 natural laws by which they are governed, were found to 
 be beneficial and even necessary, though they might 
 still be reckoned among mortal sins. They were tested 
 by far other standards than obsolete texts of Scripture, 
 and the grotesque absurdities of patristic logic. Men 
 still may repudiate usury and affect to despise the world, 
 but the new spirit is everywhere ; and even churches 
 themselves are often paid for by borrowed funds, and 
 exist by the usury that was once punished with excom- 
 munication, and threatened with the endless torments 
 of hell. 
 
 Political economy, moreover, has wholly subverted the 
 ancient doctrine of " charity," and the mischievous 
 custom of reckless almsgiving. It is no longer esteemed 
 a virtue to open the doors of great houses of religion to 
 every idle vagrant, and feed his insolence and dishonesty 
 with the bread of God. To be needlessly poor is justly 
 accounted a vice ; inasmuch as every man who does not 
 keep himself must be compelling somebody else to keep 
 him. The idler can live only by robbing the indus- 
 trious ; either picking the pocket of the honest worker 
 himself, or sending the tax gatherer to steal for him. 
 The whole world is turned upside down ; and it is not 
 too much to say, that Rationalism has restored the 
 Christianity which the mediaeval Church so nearly suc- 
 ceeded in destroying. 
 
278 RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 
 
 For, after all, the Christianity of the mediaeval Church 
 was not the Christianity of Christ. A lazy mendicant, 
 swarming with vermin and loathsome with filth, is not 
 the noblest fashion of man. Contempt of human nature 
 is wholly incompatible with the fundamental doctrine 
 even of the Church itself, the true humanity of the Son 
 of God. Rationalism is but the echo of Christ's own 
 words — " To this end was I born, and for this cause 
 came I into the world, that I might bear witness of the 
 truth; every man that is of the truth heareth my voice." 
 It is but the proving of all things, and the holding fast 
 of that which is good. But, henceforth, it is dominant 
 in Europe ; and what is not rational is doomed. Creeds, 
 churches. Bibles, forms of government, modes of social 
 life, must henceforth justify themselves or depart else- 
 whither. 
 
 And when timid Christians look with horror on this 
 huge giant striding through Europe, and wish that the 
 days of unenquiring credulity could come back once 
 more, we well might ask them at what point in the 
 progress of free thought they would be willing to stop ; 
 or what reformation they would be able to justify. They 
 could not justify dissent, nor the Reformation, for both 
 were rationalistic. They could not justify the Bible, for 
 it rests on the conviction that it is reasonable to expect 
 that Almighty God vpill make some revelation of His 
 will ; and that the Bible does actually contain the record 
 of that revelation. They could not rent a house, or buy 
 a cpat ; for some part of the price is sure to be " usury." 
 Their whole life would become one tangled mass of con- 
 tradictions, from which nothing but Rationalism could 
 possibly set them free. 
 
 " The bane and antidote are both before us." While 
 
RATIONALISM IN EUEOPE. 279 
 
 Mr. Lecky's sheets were in the press, Dr. Newman was 
 publishing the Apologia pro sua Vita. Most certainly 
 this is not the ultimate but a near alternative for every 
 one of us — Eeason or Eome. An infallible Bible must 
 have an infallible church and infallible expounders. The 
 Anglican " via media "is a road that leads only from 
 one chaos to another. Authority, if we could only find 
 it, might at least stun us. But surely there is some- 
 thing better and nobler. Eeason cannot be an accursed 
 thing. And there is a living God to guide all earnest 
 seekers into His own light. 
 
THE NEW REFOEMATION. 
 
 There are no doubt hundreds of thousands of very devout 
 men and women in England, to whom the words, " the 
 New Reformation," will convey no sort of meaning. 
 They have read or heard, that about three centuries ago, 
 our forefathers arose in rebellion against Popish errors 
 and superstitions ; they cast away the authority of the 
 bishop of Rome, and instead of it they submitted 
 themselves entirely to the guidance of the Holy 
 Scriptures. Everything that could not stand the test of 
 Scripture was abandoned, and from that time till the 
 present, " the Bible, and the Bible alone, is the religion 
 of Protestants." No doubt, especially among the dis- 
 senting sects, there are many misgivings as to the 
 accuracy and completeness with which th« Scripture test 
 was applied by the reformers, but the test itself is still 
 accepted as both necessary and sufficient. Everything 
 in the Bible is true ; and though it may not be affirmed 
 conversely that everything which cannot be found in the 
 Bible is not true, yet, " Holy Scripture containeth all 
 things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not 
 read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be 
 required of any man that it should be believed as an 
 article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary 
 to salvation." Now a reformation of a religion implies 
 
282 THE NEW EBFOEMATION. 
 
 that it has become so degenerate as to have forgotten, if 
 one may so speak, the very principle upon which it is 
 founded, the very idea which it exists to manifest. The 
 religion of Protestants, for instance, would become thus 
 degenerate if it abandoned the Scripture test, if it either 
 derived or proved its doctrines from some other source. 
 Merely to correct some misapplication of the test — to 
 prove for example that a particular form of the doctrine 
 of election was not justified by texts of Scripture — would 
 by no means be considered a reformation of Protestantism. 
 But when a quiet Protestant hears anybody talk about a 
 New Eeformation, he either stares, in blank ignorance 
 of the meaning, or he begins to shiver with horror ; he 
 experiences that creeping sensation which is supposed to 
 indicate that somebody is walking over his grave. For 
 if the words mean anything, they really must mean that 
 the old Scripture test is to be abandoned ; that a doctrine 
 may be scriptural and yet perhaps not true, or at any 
 rate not necessary ; or again, that some doctrine may be 
 necessary and true which does not happen to be scrip- 
 tural ; or, at all events, that the truth or necessity of a 
 doctrine must be proved by its conformity, not to texts 
 of Scripture, but to some other test. In fact, the attempt 
 to bring religion back to its original principles which was 
 made in the sixteenth century, and which was satisfied 
 with an appeal to the Bible, is to be confessed unsuc- 
 cessful; and a new attempt must be made which will 
 carry us beyond the Bible and carry the Bible itself along 
 with us. 
 
 It would therefore obviously be unfair not to admit, 
 that when a Protestant feels a creeping sensation on 
 hearing of a New Eeformation, somebody is walking 
 over his grave. It is quite impossible to over-estimate 
 
THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 283 
 
 the advantages which have arisen from the wide circula- 
 tion of the Holy Scriptures, and the reverence with 
 which their teaching has been received. The Bible is 
 so immeasurably in advance of the general intelligence 
 of mankind, that it may with the utmost advantage be 
 accepted as a final court of appeal for all religious dis- 
 putes by the vast majority of human beings. But even 
 a final court of appeal does not exist by its own autho- 
 rity. It is not competent to any odd number of men 
 to constitute themselves the umpires for all creation, and 
 to justify their decisions by the fact that they are 
 self- constituted umpires. Courts of law are determined 
 either by immemorial usage, or by statutes of the realm ; 
 and depend ultimately upon the intelligence and the 
 conscience of a nation. It is beyond a doubt that if the 
 judicial procedure of this country were found to be 
 incompatible with impartial justice to all suitors it would 
 at once be altered — or at any rate it would be altered as 
 quickly as English people can be persuaded to alter any 
 abuse. Anyhow, it is quite clearly understood that the 
 judgment of a final court of appeal is decisive so long as 
 the court itself exists, but that the court itself exists on 
 sufferance, and only so long as it can justify itself to the 
 conscience and intellect of the nation. 
 
 Now it is exactly thus with the sacred Scriptures. As 
 the great majority of suitors in courts of law know 
 nothing whatever about the origin, or legal authority or 
 procedure of the courts — simply doing what their soli- 
 citors tell them they must do and abiding the result ; so 
 the vast majority of Protestants know next to nothing 
 about the Bible. They have a vague notion that part of 
 it was written in Hebrew, and part in Greek; but 
 thousands of them would never know they were being 
 
284 THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 
 
 laughed at if they were told that*the book Genesis was 
 a translation into Greek out of Latin. They don't 
 know who wi-ote the different books of the Bible, nor 
 when they were written. They know nothing at all 
 about the Canon, nor why Ecclesiastes is Bible, and 
 Ecclesiasticus is not. All they know is that if they go 
 to a shop and ask for a Bible they get a certain book. 
 Ecclesiastes is in it, and Ecclesiasticus is not in it, and 
 that is quite enough for them. If they owed three 
 pounds, and were indisposed to pay it, they would be 
 summoned to the County Court; if they doubted the 
 doctrine of " election," and were disinclined to believe 
 it, they wouM be summoned to the Bible. The cases are 
 almost exactly parallel. Both may be regarded, in a sense, 
 as courts, but the majority of people do not know in either 
 case why they are courts, or whether they ought to be 
 courts at all. At the same time this ignorance does not 
 prevent an enormous amount of good. The County Court 
 is a most useful institution ', and the Bible, in all that 
 is essential, commends itself to every man's conscience 
 in the sight of God. But nevertheless it is becoming 
 more and more widely recognised that the Scriptures 
 themselves must be tested. A reasonable man can 
 hardly be expected to direct his whole life, and govern 
 even his desires by a particular book, simply because it 
 is labelled " Holy Bible." Moreover, the world swarms 
 with Bibles ; and even where the doctrines and legends 
 of a religion have not been collected into one book or 
 set of books, they might have been so collected in the 
 old times, and they might even be so collected now- It 
 is quite easy, for example, to determine what was the 
 theology or mythology of the ancient Greeks. Ingenious 
 essays have been written upon the theology of the 
 
THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 285 
 
 Homeric poems; and Mr. Gladstone has studied the 
 character and offices of Athene with immeasurably more 
 patience and care than most Protestant divines have 
 devoted to the Virgin Mary. And of course if no theo- 
 logical dogmas are to be regarded as authoritative, v?e 
 may fairly admit that there is a 'certain amount of truth 
 in every religion ; that even dumb idols, wood and stone, 
 the work of men's hands, are images of divine realities. 
 "We can all of us join in Pope's " Universal Prayer " — 
 
 " Father of All ! in every age, 
 
 In every clime adored, 
 By saint, by savage, and by sage, 
 
 Jehovah, Jove, or Lord ! 
 
 " To Thee whose temple is all space 
 
 Whose altar, earth, sea, skies ! 
 One chorus let all baing raise 
 
 AH Nature's incense rise ! " 
 
 But the great temple of the Eternal is not a pantheon ; 
 and anybody clearly perceiving and> understanding what 
 has been revealed to us concerning Jehovah, will find it 
 exceedingly hard to bow down and worship Jove. 
 Which then is which ? How long halt ye between iwo 
 opinions ? If Jehovah be God, follow him ; but if Baal, 
 then follow him. And which of these shall we follow ? 
 If it were right for human beings to decide so grave a 
 question by their mere prejudices, then every form of 
 error would be everlasting. Considering how closely 
 body and spirit are united, it may be affirmed without 
 even a metaphor that every child takes in its religion 
 with its mother's milk. We send out our missionaries 
 to urge the heathen to overcome their prejudices ; and 
 Protestant devotees are constantly labouring to overcome 
 the prejudices of the Papists. We are, even as a religious 
 
286 THE NEW REFORMATION. 
 
 duty, continually bringing every form of religion except 
 our own to some external test. The New Eeformation 
 requires us to bring our oivn religion to a test. 
 
 The foundation of the New Eeformation is Eation- 
 
 ALISM. 
 
 Of course the great majority of devout Christians in 
 England wholly disbelieve this. They believe that no 
 reformation is necessary. They believe that no refor- 
 mation is in progress. They believe that Eationalism 
 would not reform, but would, if it could, destroy the 
 Christian religion. In like manner, -in the reign of 
 Henry the Eighth the Anglican bishops believed that 
 no reformation was necessary, and they were completely 
 unaware of the fact that a great reformation was in 
 progress. "Truth it is," they said, in that madness 
 wherewith God visits men whom He has purposed to 
 destroy, "that certain apostates, friars, monks, lewd 
 priests, bankrupt merchants, vagabonds, and lewd, idle 
 fellows of corrupt intent, have embraced the abominable 
 and corrupt opinions lately sprung in Germany ; and by 
 them some have been seduced in simplicity and igno- 
 rance. Against these, if judgment has been exercised 
 according to the laws of the Church, and conformably to 
 the laws of the realm, we be without blame. If we have 
 been too remiss, and slack, we shall gladly do our duty 
 from henceforth." Exactly. And the bishops of our 
 day are quite satisfied in their own minds that they are 
 far too slack and remiss in punishing " those corrupt 
 opinions lately sprung in Germany." They would do far 
 more if they could, but alas — so much are times changed 
 — a bishop is but a dummy; other people play his cards 
 for him, and everybody knows what his next move will 
 be. Henry the Eighth's bishops were quietly digging 
 
THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 287 
 
 their own graves, and all the while they fancied that they 
 were digging out the room for the foundation of their 
 own greatness. It is not a little pathetic to meditate 
 upon the end of these men. Some of them went to the 
 axe, and almost all the rest of them to the land where 
 nothing is remembered. There is a reformation in pro- 
 gress now. The old landmarks are being removed, the 
 old tests superseded ; and the great majority of English 
 Christians know absolutely nothing about it. 
 
 What is this Rationalism then, which is the very 
 principle of the New Reformation ? There is scarcely a 
 word in the English language which more needs to 
 be explained, and so to be delivered from those slovenly, 
 market place interpretations which have rendered Ration- 
 alism itself a horror to the majority of Christian men. 
 For even people who ought to know better are constantly 
 speaking and writing as if Rationalism were a set of 
 doctrines ; and what those doctrines are they seek to 
 ascertain by examining the writings of all those who have 
 either called themselves, or been called by others, Ration- 
 alists. Unfortunately a small number of thoughtful 
 men have totally repudiated the Christian religion. 
 Carefully considering the existing Christian Church, 
 with its innumerable battling sects, and opposing dogmas, 
 with its long history, too, so full of cruelty and fraud, 
 with its political relations, and unrighteous monopolies — 
 they have come to the conclusion that the system which 
 bears such fruit as we find even in our own day in Rome 
 and Ireland, must assuredly be both mischievous and 
 false. They have therefore separated themselves from 
 the Christian society, as such, and have denounced both 
 the Church and the clergy; sometimes violently, with 
 fierce accusations of knavery and pride^sometimes con- 
 
288 THE NEW KEPORMATION. 
 
 temptuously, with scornful pity for the ignorant and 
 beguiled. Again, they have examined the Christian 
 literature, the books which contain a record of those 
 facts upon which the Christian Church professes to be 
 founded. They have concluded, for reasons more or less 
 satisfactory, that the majority of these books are far less 
 ancient than they are commonly supposed to be. They 
 have carefully criticised the various texts of the original. 
 They have cut out large portions of the New Testament 
 books which they supposed to be interpolations. In a 
 word, they leave us exceedingly few of the New Testa- 
 ment books, as belonging in any proper sense to the 
 apostolic age ; and then, judging those few fragments 
 that remain by modern science and modern philosophy, 
 they cut out as wholly unbelievable everything that is 
 miraculous or supernatural. In this way the whole of 
 Christianity vanishes. The history itself being de- 
 stroyed, the lessons which that history, if it had been 
 true, would have taught us, perish also. 
 
 In many cases there is not the slightest reason to 
 suppose that the men who have arrived at such conclu- 
 sions as these — most unfortunate and unjustifiable as 
 I believe those conclusions to be — were in the smallest 
 degree dishonest or hostile to Christianity itself. They 
 refused to believe the Christian dogmas, and the Chris- 
 tian narratives, because in fact they were unable to 
 believe them. Employing a certain method of investi- 
 gation and proof, and employing that method only to a 
 certain extent, their repudiation of the Christian religion 
 was simply inevitable. Moreover, he must be a strange 
 moralist, and a much stranger Christian, who can hesi- 
 tate to prefer the honesty of unbelief to the hypocrisy of 
 faith. 
 
THE NEW EEFORMATION. 289 
 
 But it by no means follows, that because certain 
 individuals, making an honest, and as they believed 
 complete, use of their own reason in the investigation of 
 those matters, which unquestionably demand from every 
 one of us the most careful apd conscientious attention, 
 arrived at certain conclusions, those conclusions them- 
 selves must necessarily follow from every application of 
 human reason to the facts and doctrines of Christianity. 
 In a word, a man may be a rationalist, but his par- 
 ticular creed, or even his no-creed, can by no means 
 constitute Rationalism itself. 
 
 The absurdity and injustice of attempting to identify 
 Rationalism with all the various and contradictory con- 
 clusions at which rationalists have arrived, is easily per- 
 ceived when a similar injustice is attempted to the injury 
 of Christianity or Protestantism. What would be thought 
 of the man who should make a collection of all the oddities 
 that have ever been produced by Christian writers, call 
 the whole mass of nonsense the Christian religion, and 
 forthwith begin to ridicule it as an obsolete absurdity ? 
 No doubt it is very easy to arrive at such a state of mind 
 that a man may think himself the only real Christian 
 in all the world. "Est hsec periculosa tentatio," says 
 Calvin, "nuUam ecclesiam putare ubi non appareat 
 perfecta puritas. Nam quicunque hac occupatus fuerit 
 necesse tandem erit ut discessione ab alus omnibus facta 
 solus sibi sanctus videatur in mundo, aut peculiarem 
 sectam cum hypocritis instituat." But history refuses 
 to recognise that one man who is the only saint in all 
 the world ; nor will common sense excommunicate all 
 the rest of Christendom, in order that the communion 
 of saints may be monopolised by a little handful of 
 hypocrites. So long therefore as English words retain 
 
290 . THE NEW KEPORMATION. 
 
 their meaning, people will be called Christians and will 
 quite rightly be called Christians who differ from each 
 other in almost all conceivable ways, and who agree only 
 in this — that the form of their religion has been deter- 
 mined by the advent of Jesus Christ. Some Christians 
 then affirm, and others deny, the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the necessity of the 
 sacraments, justification by faith, a vicarious atonement, 
 the everlasting torment of those who die impenitent. 
 Inasmuch as there can be no sort of compromise between 
 flat yes and no, it must be perfectly plain that these 
 affirmations and denials are mutually exclusive. If 
 therefore Christianity itself were identified with the doc- 
 trines held by Christians, then Christianity itself would 
 be a mass of absurdity no better than the senseless 
 jabbering of an idiot. But every Christian can under- 
 stand how excessively unjust such a caricature of his 
 religion would be. He would say at once, " All these 
 absurdities that you try to fasten upon me and upon my 
 religion I utterly disclaim and abhor. My religion 
 rests upon certain facts. It matters nothing to me that 
 certain individuals have attempted to account for those 
 facts in a foolish way, or to deduce from those facts, in 
 defiance of all true logic, false conclusions ; the facts 
 themselves are the common property of mankind. More- 
 over, being facts, they are quite unalterable ; but the 
 doctrines or practices which individuals may deduce 
 from those facts are utterly incalculable, and will be wise 
 or foolish according to the wisdom or the folly of each 
 separate thinker." 
 
 In like manner the natural gifts, and the culture of 
 individual thinkers, differ almost infinitely. Every human 
 being, simply because he is a human being, is possessed 
 
THK NEW EEFOEMATION. 291 
 
 of senses, intellect, emotions, will, is in fact a reason- 
 able being,- and moreover his nature is such that he 
 cannot fail to recognise that reason is his dominant 
 faculty, and that to act in defiance of reason is to throw 
 away the very glory which distinguishe's him from the 
 beasts. Sensual gratifications, stormy passions, rash 
 resolves, undisciplined, ill-regulated conduct ; all this is 
 inhuman, exactly because it is unreasonable. Nay, more, 
 there is something higher in man than the intellect, 
 and there is a use of intellectual power, cleverness, skill, 
 which has been called vulpine — the craftiness of the fox 
 — a cleverness beastly, not human. But when a man, 
 urged on by this dominant faculty of his nature, begins 
 like the boy Jesus in the temple, to ask questions ; 
 when moreover he begins to find out that learned 
 doctors are much more astonished at his questions 
 than able to answer them, when in a word he realizes 
 that he must himself find the answers for his own 
 questions ; he then also begins to perceive how slender 
 are the materials at his command, how little fit he 
 is to enter upon an inquiry which seems to stretch out 
 broader and further at every step of his advance. Each 
 fresh solution of a dif&culty seems to suggest a new 
 difficulty to be solved, till the inquirer becomes over 
 wearied and disheartened — 
 
 " For here, forlorn and lost, I tread, 
 
 With fainting steps and slow, 
 Where wUds immeasurahly spread 
 Seem lengthening as I go." 
 
 The inquirer is urged forward by his imperious reason, 
 while at every turning crowds of guides offer him their 
 services, and bewilder him with contradictory advice. 
 
 u2 
 
292 THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 
 
 There are religions which claim his submission because 
 they are old, and there are religions which claim his 
 submission because they arethe newest birth of time — 
 the ripest fruit of all the thought, and even of all the 
 mistakes, of nearly a score of centuries. He becomes 
 half stifled by the press and crowd of those who would 
 be only too pleased to relieve him altogether of the re- 
 sponsibility of being a reasonable creature. He watches 
 them, and he sees the different religions, like porters at 
 a wharf, snatching hold of each new comer, seizing his 
 luggage, and hurrying him off up steep steps or narrow 
 passages, but above all getting him quite out of the 
 reach of all the other porters. The inquirer, like a 
 tormented passenger just landed from a steam-packet, 
 is apt to get savage, and to say to some ticket-porter 
 religion, " Just put my box down and leave me to my- 
 self for a minute or two. Who on earth are you, to be 
 seizing everything I've got in the world, and tearing off 
 into some dark passage with it ? You are very likely 
 the most honest ticket-porter in all the world; but then, 
 on the other hand, you may be a drunken old thief, and 
 any how I'll just keep my box in my own possession." 
 Vei-y likely the newly-arrived passenger may make a 
 mistake after all, and fall a prey to some sleek old 
 hypocrite with an honest-looking face. And so a man 
 in search for truth, and especially religious truth, may 
 make a thousand mistakes ; but at any rate he is a 
 seeker, not led away without some reason or proof by 
 the first theory that offers itself. "As far as I can see 
 at present," he says to some form of religion, " you are 
 true ; I therefore give myself up to you. God has told 
 me, broadly, generally, what I ought to do and what I 
 ought to avoid. It seems to me that you are simply 
 
THE NEW REFORMATION. 293 
 
 applying, in all the minute details of life, these great 
 principles ; I therefore submit myself to you, because I 
 think I have good reason for it ; because, so far as I 
 can see now, my whole nature feels the need of you. 
 But if I find hereafter that, instead of applying to all 
 the details of life the grand divine principles of morality, 
 you somehow contradict them ; if you begin to teach me 
 that those very principles are themselves delusive, and, 
 above all, if you require me to do dishonour to that 
 imperial reason which first taught me my spiritual 
 necessities, and then seemed to tell me that you could 
 satisfy them, I shall know that I was wholly mistaken 
 about you. I shall be quite certain that reason itself, the 
 sovereign lord of all my faculties, can never have com- 
 manded me to become guilty of treason. I shall know 
 that you are, in. fact, not a religion at all, but a gloomy, 
 inhuman, demoralizing superstition," Unfortunately 
 the majority of so-called religions are inhuman super- 
 stitions ; and rationalists are to be found in every one 
 of them, feeling their way to something higher and 
 better. And there are great systems of denial which 
 are as inhuman and demoralizing as the grossest super- 
 stitions ; and among them also are rationalists to be 
 found, seeking light and life. But Eationalism itself 
 is neither disbelief nor credulity ; it is not any one of 
 the innumerable, irreconcilable results at which ration- 
 alists have arrived. It is a method, a principle, a 
 human right, a solemn spiritual duty. 
 
 The Christian religion presents itself to men some- 
 times as a system of dogmas, sometimes as a social 
 organization, sometimes as a form of personal goodness. 
 In other words, the appearance of Christ among men 
 implied certain facts about God and about men, and 
 
294 THE NEW REFORMATION. 
 
 about the relations between them, which, when expressed 
 in verbal propositions, are the simplest doctrines of the 
 Christian creed. So, again, the sort of life which Jesus 
 Christ lived in the world ; His self-sacrificing love, the 
 divine readiness with which He helped all who were in 
 need, the gentle affection which He seemed to have 
 power to shed into the hearts of all who came into 
 contact with Him, His wonderful power to unite His 
 followers into a brotherhood ; all this lies at the foun- 
 dation of the Christian Church. Once more, the perfect 
 beauty of Christ's own goodness, the searching subtlety 
 of His morality, the spirit, and truth of everything He 
 taught, brings every human being who knows anything 
 about it face to face with the great mystery of His own 
 responsibility. If I am to believe what Jesus Christ 
 taught by word or by life, if I am to become a member 
 of a society founded upon self-sacrifice, then I must 
 myself he what tiFesus Christ was. Christianity, there- 
 fore, may be called the highest form of human life. 
 
 Kationalism also may be expressed as a doctrine ; it 
 may be the foundation of a society ; it may be a law of 
 human conduct. As a doctrine, Rationalism may be 
 expressed somewhat thus : — There is truth for men to 
 know, there are in human nature all necessary faculties 
 for arriving at the knowledge of it, there is supplied to 
 every man some mode of contact between his own spirit 
 and the truth. As a law of human conduct. Rationalism 
 may be expressed somewhat thus : — Whenever youi- spirit 
 is brought into contact with what professes to be truth, 
 make the most careful use of all those faculties which 
 are included in your human nature, in order that you 
 may ascertain whether it is really truth or not. If you 
 find that it is not truth, cast it away. If you find that 
 
THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 295 
 
 it is truth, submit yourself to it without reserve, with 
 perfect loyalty of thought and act ; and whatever it may 
 cost you, obey truth with your whole being. As the 
 foundation of a society. Rationalism may be expressed 
 somewhat thus : — Inasmuch as there is truth for men to 
 know, inasmuch as there are in human nature all ne- 
 cessary faculties fo>r arriving at the knowledge of it ; in- 
 asuuch as there is supplied to every man some mode of 
 contact between his. own spirit and the truth ; and again, 
 inasmuch as whenever our spirits are brought into con- 
 tact with what professes to be the truth, we ought to 
 maka the most careful use of all those faculties which 
 are iicluded in our human nature in order that we may 
 ascertain whether it is really truth or not, to cast away 
 what we find to be false, and to obey the truth with our 
 whole power ; we, therefore, jointly and severally devote 
 ourselves to the pursuit of trmth, and pledge ourselves 
 to obey it. The condition of communion with us shall 
 be sincerity and earnestness; and they only shall be , 
 excommunicated from our fellowship who will not seek 
 for truth, or who will not acknowledge and obey it. 
 
 If this be at all a fair account of Rationalism^ it is quite 
 obvious that it cannot be identified with any particular 
 set of doctrines, much less with mere denials. For 
 anybody to say,, therefore, that Rationalism is the denial 
 of Christianity, or the rejection of the Bible, or anything 
 of that sort,, is a culpable misrepresentation of Ration- 
 alism. I don't know how to test a matter of this sort 
 so well as by bringing it to a personal issue. Strauss 
 and Renan, for instance, are rationalists ; and it is not 
 misrepresenting their belief to say that they deny the 
 historical veracity of the four gospels. On the contrary, 
 there aie very many rationalists who — in my judgment, 
 
296 THE NEW REFOEMATION. 
 
 with the hest possible reason — regard the history con- 
 tained in the four gospels as the best authenticated 
 history in all literature. But neither the denial nor the/ 
 acceptance of the gospel history constitutes Eationalism, 
 The man is a rationalist who, knowing that what is 
 called the Christian religion professes to be complet^y 
 true, determines to test it by what many people woiid 
 call his own reason. The Christian religion is contained 
 partly in books ; he will therefore examine the boc^s, 
 and subject them to all the tests by which written lan- 
 guage can be tried. It is partly a morality, and he/will 
 therefore test the Christian precepts by his own |con- 
 science, and by those moral judgments which have|been 
 accepted by the general conscience of mankind. ; The 
 Christian religion appeals to himself as a human being ; 
 he will therefore ascertain whether or not it adapt^ itself 
 to his human nature. The result of all this examination 
 will depend very much upon the individual by wfiom it 
 is conducted. But, whatever the result may be, it will be 
 always open to revision ; and if it denies too much, or if 
 it affirms too much, the error may hereafter be coriected. 
 
 There are two popular antitheses which require a 
 somewhat careful examination. The antithesis Ibetween 
 reason and faith, and the antithesis betweet reason 
 and revelation. The first of these may be eispanded 
 into the following propositions ; — ' In religion there are 
 very many things that we can understand, there are very 
 many other things that we cannot understand.' Those 
 things that we can understand are capable oj certain 
 kinds of proof, but those things that we cannot under- 
 stand are strictly speaking capable of no proot -whatever. 
 We ascertain the one by reason, the other hy faith.' 
 Now thi sort of antithesis is, to speak plainly, wholly 
 
THE NEW REFORMATION. 297 
 
 nnintelligible. The word faith has more meanings than 
 one, but not one of those meanings will justify its oppo- 
 sition to reason. There seem, in truth, to be strictly 
 speaking only three meanings to this word. It may 
 mean either belief; or trust in a person ; or the accept- 
 ance of some provisional hypothesis, which may be a 
 satisfactory explanation of facts, and which is accepted 
 for the sake of ascertaining whether it is a satisfactory 
 explanation or not. In this last sense, it is true enough 
 that we must belieye before we can know ; but our belief 
 is always liable to revision, adopted for the very sake of 
 being verified, and abanddned if we cannot justify it. 
 When by faith we mean belief, it is admitted at once 
 that such a faith can never be directly produced by any 
 ' act of our own will. "We may indeed exclude from our 
 attention certain portions of necessary evidence. We 
 may, as it were, keep opposing witnesses out of court ; 
 and by never hearing what tliey say, escape the effect 
 which their testimony might have upon us. But if we 
 do hear what they have to say, we cannot possibly escape 
 the effect of their testimony. No human being who is 
 capable of understanding, and who actually does under- 
 stand the terms employed, can possibly examine the 
 fifth proposition of Euclid, and then refuse to believe 
 that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are 
 equal. He may refuse to confess that he believes it ; 
 he may, in fact, tell as many lies as he likes ; but when- 
 ever a sufficient amount of the fitting kind of evidence 
 is produced, belief follows necessarily, inevitably. And, 
 in like manner, when the necessary amount and kind of 
 evidence is wholly wanting, belief cannot possibly follow. 
 But, so far as faith is identical with belief, it will scarcely 
 be pretended that it can be a virtue to separate faith 
 
298 THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 
 
 from reason. To believe without evidence is prejudice. 
 It has in every age been regarded as a most mischievous 
 folly. Moreover, in religion it is and always has been 
 at the root of the most pestilent superstitions. Inas- 
 much, too, as prejudice has a negative as well as a 
 positive side, seeing it is quite as easy for a person to 
 believe without knowing why that something is not true, 
 as to believe that something else is, — it has always been 
 the great obstacle in the way of every kind of Reforma- 
 tion. Faith, then, when it is identical with belief, has 
 to do with propositions. But propositions affirm certain 
 relations between the things signified by their terms. 
 It is perfectly obvious, therefore, that no honest man 
 in his senses can pretend to believe a proposition that 
 he doesn't understand. He may utter it, he may write 
 it down on paper and sign his name at the end of it ; 
 he may admit the possibility of its being true ; he may 
 admit the fact, if it be a fact, that hundreds of other 
 people know what it means, and know that what it pre- 
 dicates is true. But no amount of ingenuity, no con- 
 ceivable intensity of desire, no solemn sense of duty, no 
 dread of the consequences of uncertainty of denial, can 
 attach belief to a proposition the terms of which are 
 unintelligible. It is very likely that those queer marks 
 one sees on tea-chests are propositions in the Chinese 
 language ; but what would be thought of an Englishman 
 who, knowing nothing vs^hatever of Chinese, should 
 simply point to two or three sets of black marks on a 
 tea-chest, and imagine it a great achievement of virtue 
 to believe them. Not only is belief apart from reason 
 not the highest Christian excellence, but belief apart 
 from reason is either insanity or a vice. 
 
 Nor can reason be separated from faiitb, when faith 
 
THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 299 
 
 means trust in a person. Trust in persons, indeed, 
 apart from reason, would place all the industry and 
 yirtue of a community at the mercy of knaves and vaga- 
 bonds. It is no doubt wise, and even necessary, to 
 trust a man until we find out that he is untrustworthy ; 
 but the reason why we trust an unknown stranger is 
 that we already possess so much knowledge of human 
 nature, of the virtues and vices of mankind, and of the 
 probable loss or gain of any punishable impropriety of 
 conduct, that we know it is more likely that a perfect 
 stranger does not intend to injure us than that he does. 
 But reason is far higher than trust in a person. Indeed, 
 trust is but one mode of reason, one of its innumerable 
 manifestations, and distrust is another. There would 
 be no glory or honour in trust, if distrust were never 
 right and wise ; and a man who trusts everybody without 
 knowing why, may very possibly be a saint, but very 
 certainly is a fool. 
 
 But if faith,, when it is identical with belief, depends 
 upon reason ; and if faith, when it means trust in a 
 person, depends upon reason ; it is scai-cely likely that 
 it means tlie very opposite of reason, when it depends 
 upon a combination of both. No conceivable amount 
 of trust in a person can enable anybody to believe a pro- 
 position whose terms are unintelligible. I will not 
 shrink from suggesting the very highest illustration of 
 what I mean. I can conceive of nothing more com- 
 pletely justified by reason than entire confidence in 
 Jesus Christ. But if Jesus Christ Himself were to utter 
 certain words which conveyed to us no meaning what- 
 ever, or words which formed a contradictory and im- 
 possible proposition — such for instance as the words 
 one is three — and ask us to believe them, we should be 
 
300 THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 
 
 bound to speak the truth ; and we should be compelled _ 
 therefore to say something about equivalent to this — 
 " We do not the least understand what these words 
 mean. So far as we do understand them, they seem to 
 affirm that a thing is and is not at the same time. We 
 are perfectly certain that what you say to us is true ; and 
 if you tell us that these words, which we know nothing 
 whatever about, affirm something that you know to he 
 true, we have no sort of doubt that they do. When you 
 tell us what the words mean, we shall be very likely not 
 only to believe you, but from our very knowledge to believe 
 that which the words affirm. Meanwhile, though we per- 
 fectly trust in you, it is impossible for us to believe or dis- 
 believe what it is quite out of our power to understand." 
 There is yet another sense in which the word faith 
 may be used, and used legitimately, but even in that 
 sefise faith requires the justification of reason. We 
 know, for instance, that God is good ; and yet the world 
 is so full of mysteries of misery that we scarcely know 
 how in the midst of all such sorrow there can be an all- 
 powerful Good governing the world. Now, in the midst of 
 all the mysteries of life, the conclusions of faith will, as it 
 were, outrun their premisses — affirming more than has 
 been really proved, though more of the same kind. I 
 know no nobler expression of such a faith as this in 
 all modern literature than we have in" In Memoriam." 
 
 " The wish, that of the living whdle 
 No life may fail beyond the grave, 
 Derives it not from what we have 
 The hkest God, within the soul ? 
 
 " Are God and Nature then at strife 
 
 That Nature lends such evil dreams? 
 So careful of the type she seems, 
 So careless of the eingle life ; 
 
THE NEW REFOEMATION. 301 
 
 " That I, considering everywhere, 
 Her secret meaning ia her deeds. 
 And finding that of fifty seeds 
 She often brings but one to bear, 
 
 " I falter where I firmly trod. 
 
 And falhng with my weiglit of cares 
 Upon the great world's altar stairs 
 That slope through darkness up to God, 
 
 " I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope 
 And gather dust and chaff, and call 
 To what I feel is Lord of All, 
 And faintly trust the larger hope." 
 
 But it is surely plain that faith of this sort cannot be 
 separated from reason. There is a love of God that 
 passeth knowledge ; and we at least know this, that we 
 have never ourselves been able to exhaust the knowledge 
 of the love of G-od, and to say — " Now there is nothing 
 fresh to learn about this." We may therefore assume 
 that in the infinite love of God there is some solution 
 for all those diflS.culties which are unquestionably serious 
 enough to embarrass our consciences, but are by no 
 means of a kind to destroy or contradict what we 
 actually know about God Himself. 
 
 But when faith is contrasted with reason it means 
 credulity, it means Mwreason. It means — not belief 
 justified by evidence, nor trust in a person justified by 
 what we know about him — but blind confidence in some 
 vague and useless abstraction — such, for instance, as 
 the " Catholic Church," or the " Anglican Church," or 
 the unknown individuals who form the popular opinion 
 about the Sacred Scriptures. The Eoman Catholic 
 Church, for instance, affirms that the Scriptures declare 
 that the substance of the consecrated bread- in the 
 Eucharist becomes the substance of the body of Christ. 
 
802 THE NEW EEPOEMATION. 
 
 The Anglican Church affirms the contrary of this ; but, 
 on the other hand, it incorporates into its liturgy the 
 creed commonly called the creed of St. Athanasius. 
 "We are expected to believe these, and other dogmas, 
 not because we understand them, nor because we ever 
 meet vsdth anybody who does understand them, but 
 simply because somebody or other tells us that we 
 ought to believe them, and that the less we understand 
 them the greater is the merit of our belief. I do not 
 mean by this to deny either of these dogmas ; nor, on 
 the contrary, do I mean to affirm them. But, assuredly, 
 if the doctrine of the Trinity, for instance, could justify 
 itself neither to any separate part, nor to the whole, of 
 my human faculties, it is superfluous to say that I 
 should reject it — the plain fact is, that it would be 
 imf)ossible for me to accept it. There is therefore no 
 contradiction, no sort of opposition between reason and 
 fiiith. Faith itself is a mode of reason, and the man 
 who has no reason is incapable of faith. 
 
 The other antithesis — between reason and revelation — 
 is even much sillier than the antithesis between reason 
 and faith. Of course, reason and revelation are different 
 things, and so are the human eye and the visible 
 world. But things that are different are by no means 
 mutually exclusive. Indeed, reason and revelation are 
 so far from being mutually exclusive that each implies 
 the other ; for revelation is neither more nor less than 
 the uncovering of hidden truth in order that reason may 
 apprehend it ; and reason is that very faculty in man 
 which apprehends truth in whatever way it made be 
 made known to him. Every revelation of God, however, 
 is a fact either in the external world, or in the inmost 
 experience of an individual, or in both together; and 
 
THE NEW REFOEMATION. 303 
 
 the opposition between reason and revelation is just as 
 stupid as the opposition between the eye and the external 
 world. In any single act of vision the visible object 
 and the power of vision are necessary factors ; and he 
 will be able to say which is most important, reason or 
 revelation, who can tell us whether the factor four or the 
 factor five is most necessary to the production of the 
 product twenty. 
 
 At the same time, the antithesis between reason and 
 revelation is so often repeated, and with so much of 
 absurd exposition and illustration on both sides, that 
 it becomes necessai-y to show that Rationalism is by 
 no means opposed to what is called revealed religion. 
 There are many doctrines, and there are many narratives, 
 which any impartial inquirer would certainly reject ; 
 but he would reject them exactly because he could find 
 no reason to believe that they have been really revealed. 
 For, sm'ely, the truth of a doctrine can scarcely be said 
 to be revealed if the human mind has been furnished 
 with a complete disproof of its truth. The question is 
 very often asked, Will any rationalist venture to affirm 
 that human reason could have worked out for itself such 
 a religion as the religion of Christ ? But why not put 
 the question on a lower ground, where, perhaps, we may 
 be in less danger of irreverence ; and where, at any rate, 
 we may seek for an answer without exasperating those 
 hateful prejudices which infest the whole domain of 
 theology ? We might ask. Could the unaided human 
 reason have worked out for itself such a science as 
 chemistry ? Or, we might ask again, Could the unaided 
 human eye have produced for itself those facts which 
 are at the base of the science of optics ? The answer 
 is, of course, negative ; but a negative answer by no 
 
304 THE NEW EEFOBMATION. 
 
 means disproves the value or the necessity either of the 
 eye or of the reason. Chemisti-y is the result of the 
 application of the reason to a certain set of phenomena ; 
 and for the knowledge of those facts which are at the 
 base of the science of optics there must be an external 
 world to see, and an eye to see it with. It would justly 
 be considered in the highest degree absurd to contend 
 that reason has nothing to do with chemistry, because 
 the elements and their compounds and the laws of their 
 combination are independent of the mind by which they 
 are perceived. And in religion it is equally absurd 
 to disparage reason because Almighty God, and human 
 beings, and their relations to each other, and the 
 separate historical facts by which these have been 
 manifested, are also independent of the perceiving mind. 
 If God is to be known, the knower and the knowable 
 are equally necessary. 
 
 The natural history of religion is always an interesting 
 object of inquiry, and might, doubtless, be useful if it 
 were not for an almost complete absence of any trust- 
 worthy materials out of which such a history might be 
 constructed. The Bible narrative of the genesis of the 
 human race and its earliest history is of the highest 
 value, even though it should be impossible to regard it 
 as historically true. There is the deepest moral necessity 
 for our regarding every sort of evil as a departure from 
 the divine ideal ; and, at any rate, each one of us, in 
 his own experience, is conscious, not only of a fall, but 
 of a long series of falls. It is not therefore wonderful 
 that this universal experience should have been repre- 
 sented in the form of a concrete fact, and transferred to 
 the earliest period of the history of mankind. But 
 even in the Bible narrative we scarcely pass outside the 
 
THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 305 
 
 garden of Eden without coming into contact with the 
 stern realities which remind us that the Divine purpose 
 is working itself out at once hy the aid and by the 
 opposition of the dependent will of men. We have 
 scarcely heard the "very good" of the Divine "Worker 
 before we hear a murdered brother's blood ciying to 
 God from the ground. The inestimable superiority of 
 the sacred history is this — that it is no bare record of 
 the ambition and the crimes of men, but that human 
 conduct is continually tested by those great moral prin- 
 ciples which are always far in advance of actual life, and 
 which are themselves continually purified by widening 
 experience and deepening thought. The dawn of history, 
 whether we find it in the Bible or anywhere else, exhibits 
 man to us, as in the majority utterly debased, sunk in com- 
 plete barbarism ; with here and there nobler spirits, not 
 only themselves fighting with evil, but seeking to raise 
 other people to their own level. Indeed, we see what is so 
 often and so unjustly disparaged, man working out a 
 religion for himself — that is to say, availing himself of 
 all those external facts, and of that knowledge of him- 
 self, through which God has made it possible for men to 
 recognise His existence, and His character, and His 
 government of the world. 
 
 There are, at least, two conceivable modes in which 
 God might make His existence, and government, and 
 character known to men. It is conceivable, that in some 
 direct manner, by some appeal partly even to the senses. 
 He might reveal Himself to His creatures. It is noto- 
 rious that the earliest literature of almost all ages is 
 full of supposed instances of this kind of revelation. 
 In like manner, we read in the Old Testament how 
 three men appeared before the tent of Abraham, and 
 
 I z 
 
806 THE NEW REFORMATION. 
 
 conversed with him ; and it is borne in upon his soul 
 that he is conversing with the Eternal Himself, and 
 listening to the very voice of God. Again, a burning 
 bush attracts the notice of Moses in the desert ; and as 
 he turns to look why the bush still burns, but is not 
 consumed, he is aware of the presence of Jehovah, and 
 I'eceives from Him his commission to be the deliverer of 
 the children of Israel. It is, of course, conceivable that 
 in any number of cases, and even in all cases where 
 spiritual guidance is required. Almighty God might 
 reveal His will to His creatures in a similar manner. 
 There might be an audible voice, with certain unmis- 
 takeable tokens that it was not the voice of man, nor the 
 product of a vivid imagination, but verily and truly the 
 voice of God, 
 
 It is, however, perfectly certain that this mode of 
 revelation, even if a single genuine instance of it can be 
 found in all history, is in the highest degree exceptional ; 
 and can have had a special value, if at all, only to those 
 very few persons who were the direct recipients of it. 
 Abraham may have had no doubt whatever that he had 
 seen and spoken with God ; and that, in some myste- 
 rious way, "the three men" were verily " the Lord." 
 But as a visible appearance of the Infinite Spirit is in 
 the highest degree improbable ; as there is an obvious 
 confusion even in the very narrative itself of this won- 
 drous manifestation ; and, as nothing is more likely than 
 that the firm belief that Abraham had in the constant 
 presence of God, and His willingness to receive the earnest 
 prayers of His people, should have taken some outward 
 shape ; we may well recognise the truth of what 
 Abraham is said to have received fixim God Himself, 
 without at all committing ourselves to the belief that 
 
THE NEW KEPOEMATION. 307 
 
 this truth was imparted to him in the mode which he 
 himself supposed. It is certainly true, that the secret 
 of the Lord is with all them who fear Him ; and also, 
 that this secret can be revealed to them without any- 
 such sensible manifestations as we read of in the 
 history of Abraham. It is also revealed to us — that is 
 to say, it is made plain to us — that the Euler of the 
 world is continually, so to speak, doing His utmost to 
 prevent the necessity of destroying or making miserable 
 His own creatures. In all* sorts of ways is God 
 answering the earnest prayers of His people " that He 
 will not destroy the city even for ten's sake." But all 
 this revelation is brought to us, not by three men at a 
 tent door, but by the long lessons of history, the healing 
 processes which are at work both in nature and in 
 society, and the power of forgiveness and self-sacrifice 
 that we find in our own hearts. Assuming even that 
 the narrative in the eighteenth chapter of Genesis was 
 furnished originally in one form or another by Abraham 
 himself, we shall, nevertheless, be bound to receive its 
 moral and spiritual lessons rather in defiance of their 
 startUng supernatural accompaniments than by the help 
 of them. Those lessons are indisputably true, and 
 therefore, like everything else which is good and true, are 
 from God ; but as to the mystery of the relation 
 between " the three men " and " the Lord," we have no 
 materials out of which it is possible for us to form a 
 judgment. It wiU scarcely be af&rmed that Rationalism 
 is incompatible with the belief in the existence of a 
 God ; and, if we believe in a loving God at all, we cannot 
 wonder that Abraham realized His presence, and that 
 he should have been specially conscious of His presence 
 and guidance in all the most serious crises of his life. 
 
 x2 
 
308 THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 
 
 It is impossible that lie can have failed to connect with 
 the divine government and character the frightful degra- 
 dation of the cities of the plain, and the sure and terrible 
 judgment that such moral degeneracy was hurrying on. 
 It is likely enough that three visitors talking to him at 
 his tent, and then passing on to those very cities, may 
 have wrought on his mind a solemn fear and an earnest 
 cry to God for help and mercy. But it is this — this 
 clear assertion of God's righteousness, this firm hope 
 in God's mercy, this recognition of the indissoluble 
 bond by which vice and ruin are fastened together — it 
 is this which commends the revelation to our reason 
 and conscience, whatever may have been the mode in 
 which these truths were first made known to Abraham 
 himself. In other words, we can always test the 
 substance of a revelation, but we can by no means 
 always test the form. When Abraham tells us that 
 God is righteous and merciful, when he assures us that 
 that is true, and that it was made known to him by God 
 Himself, we have no difficulty whatever in believing 
 him. " For every good gift, and every perfect gift is 
 from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, 
 with whom is no variableness, nor shadow of a turning." 
 But if he were to tell us that God made known this 
 truth to him by means of a mysterious apparition of 
 three men at his tent door, we should regard that 
 statement as completely beyond our power to verify, 
 and also as utterly immaterial to the truth itself. We 
 judge of what professes to be a revealed truth by consi- 
 dering what the truth itself is, and not by considering 
 the mode in which it was made known. 
 
 The great and obvious' defect, therefore, of that mode 
 of revelation which consists in a special supernatural 
 
THE NEW REFORMATION. 309 
 
 contact with some individual, would in every case 'be the 
 extreme difficulty, not to say impossibility, of furnishing 
 to other persons sufficient evidence of such super- 
 natural contact. As, by its very nature, it must be quite 
 outside of the general experience of mankind, the man 
 who has been conscious of it in himself will be aware of 
 no close resemblances, probably of no strong analogies, 
 by which to impart to others what he has himself 
 experienced. He can therefore do no more than make 
 an assertion, which must always be open to grave 
 suspicion, as to the mode in which the truth was made 
 known to him, and then disclose the truth itself. But 
 nothing will ever persuade reasonable human beings 
 that what is absurd or immoral can really be of God. 
 If therefore any statement be true or good, its truth 
 and goodness will be the proof of its divinity ; and, if 
 it be false and immoral, its falsehood and evil will be the 
 disproof of the divinity of the mode of its revelation. 
 
 If we examine the actual history of religious beliefs 
 we shall find eveiy reason to suppose that they originated, 
 not by special supernatural revelations miraculously 
 imparted by God to favoured individuals, but from all 
 the facts of the world on the one hand, as a divine 
 material furnished for human use from the beginning ; 
 and, on the other hand, the operation of the human 
 intellect, and reason, and conscience, employed upon 
 that material. There have arisen, doubtless, in different 
 ages, and in different parts of the world, gifted spirits, 
 strong in righteousness, and endowed both with the 
 insight and the foresight of goodness, who have per- 
 ceived far more than their fellow men the open secret of 
 the world ; have been more profoundly conscious of the 
 power and presence of God, have lived more habitually 
 
310 THE NEW REFORMATION. 
 
 in spiritual communion with the Source of all that is ; 
 and who have believed themselves the special instru- 
 ments of the Divine will. They have always believed 
 themselves commissioned by the Most High, and 
 therefore they have always spoken with authority, and 
 commanded the assent of their fellow men. More- 
 over, their superior wisdom, the depth and breadth 
 and fruitfulness of the truths they affirmed, their 
 practical sagacity, and their sympathy both in thought 
 and deed, with those laws which had been unper- 
 ceived by others — these things have justified their 
 claims to a divine guidance, and have ennobled those 
 who have consented to be led by them. Moreover — 
 a not insignificant token that they believed the inspi- 
 ration of which they were conscious to cover the whole 
 of their life and work — they enjoin, with equal confidence, 
 and with equal assumption of divine authority, the 
 gi'eat moral laws which are of eternal obligation, 
 ceremonial differences between clean and unclean, the 
 number of loops for the outermost edge of a curtain, 
 and the necessary precautions for cleanliness and health. 
 Often, too, in their frailty, they claimed even for their 
 follies and vices a sort of divine sanction, as when 
 Jacob robbed Esau of his birthright ; or, in quite 
 another region, when Mohammed pretended that the 
 truths he made known to the tribes of his people had been 
 revealed to him by means of certain supernatural wonders. 
 At the same time, it must never be forgotten that the 
 enormous pretensions, and, above all, the crafty impos- 
 ture of the great religious leaders of mankind, are to be 
 attributed mostly to their followers rather than to 
 themselves. The true prophet has ever felt himself 
 overwhelmed with a burden of the Lord, and has 
 
THE NEW KEPOEITATION. 311 
 
 dreaded rather than welcomed the awful responsibility 
 of superior wisdom. 
 
 But when it is afSrmed that the spiritual progress of 
 men has been rather of a natural than of a supernatural 
 kind, it is to be remembered that even nature itself is 
 but an expression of the will of Grod. Thus the 
 Christian Scriptures teach us, that when God deter- 
 mined to impart to men the completest possible revelation 
 of His own character and will He sent His own Son, 
 not simply by some supernatural contact with some 
 favoured individuals to impart the needed truth to 
 them and bid them to communicate it to others, but 
 actually to come within the sphere of nature itself ; and 
 so to communicate with men by being Himself really 
 and truly a man. The foundation, therefore, of the 
 Christian religion is a history ; and though the advent of 
 Christ into the world was unquestionably a revelation of 
 that Living Will, which is behind the world, and the 
 ultimate cause of all its phenomena, yet the work of 
 Christ among men conformed, in every possible par- 
 ticular, to what we are in the habit of calling the laws 
 of nature. Thus it is obvious, at least if we are to 
 beHeve the evangelic history, that Jesus grew in wisdom, 
 and in stature, and in favour with God and man ; that, 
 being filled with the Holy Ghost, with that Spirit which 
 united Him to the Father, and to every member of the 
 Divine family. He was ever ready to perceive and to 
 adapt himself to every law both of sonship and of 
 brotherhood. And yet the inquiring, docile spirit of 
 the boy who asked questions of the doctors in the 
 temple, was by no means the same as the ripe wisdom 
 of the prophet teaching His disciples on the mount. 
 Coming within the limits of earthly nature, and of the 
 
312 THE NEW REFORMATION. 
 
 nature of man, even Jesus of Nazareth submitted in 
 that very act to reveal to us the will of the Father by 
 being a learner, before He could reveal that will to us as 
 a teacher. Those who came into personal contact with 
 Christ were undoubtedly brought into contact with the 
 supernatural. They became aware, more perfectly than 
 they had ever known it before, that for all that endlessly 
 varying series of phsenomena which we call nature, there 
 is a cause other than themselves, and independent of 
 themselves ; and that the Living Will, the Force which 
 is the Source of all changes, is akin to the will of man, 
 with all its surroundings of wisdom and affection. But 
 they arrived at this conviction by means of the very 
 naturalness of Christ's life. In other words, the life of 
 Christ in the world taught men not that the super- 
 natural is separated from the natural by a chasm 
 which nothing can bridge over, but that the two are in 
 close contact, and that man is in the very image of God. 
 
 It is the special value of the Bible, that it contains 
 a record of those facts which have been of the greatest 
 spiritual significance, and of the lives and teachings of 
 those men to whom it has been given to perceive that 
 spiritual significance. Nor is Rationalism in the least 
 degree committed to a denial of any miraculous accom- 
 paniments or instruments of the revelation of truth. 
 It is pledged only to examine the evidence and to abide 
 by the result. It may not begin the investigation by 
 assuming the infallibility of the Scriptures, but neither 
 may it begin by assuming the impossibility of a miracle. 
 The physical sciences, those which are concerned only 
 with phasnomena, are undoubtedly within its province. 
 But it is also bound to consider whether there may not be 
 forces, and a primal Force, behind all phsenomena ; and 
 
THE NEW EEFORMATION. 313 
 
 to ascertain, if possible, what is the nature of that 
 Force. For it is of the very essence of Rationalism, 
 that the reason shall employ itself with perfect freedom 
 upon every object of human thought ; and the tyranny 
 of science is quite as irrational as the tyranny of orthodoxy. 
 It is a matter of very small importance, for instance, that 
 science has found no trace of God among ph(snomena — 
 which constitute the whole province of science — because 
 no one who believes in a God imagines that He is a 
 "phaenomenon." But Eationalism is bound to ask, what 
 the name God connotes, and whether there be any 
 reality corresponding to a name which no civilized 
 language is without. And for this purpose it is bound 
 to avail itself of every kind of evidence. It must 
 recognise the facts of the material world, and all the 
 positive and proved conclusions of physical science; 
 but it must also recognise the facts that are furnished 
 by reflection and conscience, by the emotions and the 
 will. The propositions of science affirm what is, not 
 what always has been, nor what always will be, nor what 
 by a necessity independent -of itself always must be.' 
 Science itself is wholly independent of history ; and, 
 on the other hand, history is wholly independent of 
 scienoe. But Bationalism has both of them, and much 
 more for its province ; and must, if possible, keep the 
 peace and justly arbitrate between them — must receive 
 what contributions of truth each has to oifer, and com- 
 pare, and combine, and classify them, and sum up into 
 one whole revelation what they have separately furnished, 
 " at sundry times and in divers manners." 
 
 Science excludes miracles, not as impossible, but as 
 out of its province — as involving a theory about cause 
 which belongs not to physics, but to metaphysics. But 
 
814 THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 
 
 Rationalism includes metaphysics, and therefore may 
 entertain the question of miracles ; it, moreover, includes 
 history, and therefore must. 
 
 History includes the life of Jesus Christ, and the 
 effects of that life upon mankind; and the record of 
 that life, and of its earliest effects, is to be found in the 
 New Testament — and there only. It is to be remem- 
 bered that we do not learn the character of Jesus from 
 one source, and His works from another, and the 
 character of His followers from a third. If this were so, 
 the problem of the origin of Christianity would be by 
 no means simple, but it would admit of some solutions 
 which are now impossible. It might, for instance, have 
 been contended that Jesus of Nazareth, being a very 
 good man, had, by His piety and wisdom, produced a 
 profound impression upon some of the nobler spirits of 
 His connti-y, had bound them together in a brotherhood 
 of mutual affection, and compelled them, by the strength 
 of His own convictions, and the fervour of His own 
 zeal, to devote their lives to the proclamation of those 
 truths which the purity of His own spirit had enabled 
 Him to perceive. That His followers gathered about 
 themselves a number of believers of far inferior enthu- 
 siasm and moral earnestness ; men and women, who, 
 like all the vulgar, were ever seeking for signs and 
 wonders. That these later followers, not so much of 
 Jesus as of His disciples, invented such wonders as 
 would satisfy their own sense of what was fitting in a 
 great religious teacher, and so attributed to Jesus what 
 would have been admitted neither by Himself nor by His 
 first followers. In this case there would have been 
 some plausibility in the hypothesis that, while the 
 miracles of Christ must unquestionably be discarded, as 
 
T^E NEW KEFOSMATION. 315 
 
 being in fact impossible, we may yet retain our belief 
 in the surpassing goodness of His character, and even in a 
 sound practical wisdom which at once secured and justified 
 the complete confidence and obedience of His disciples. 
 
 But it is quite impossible that this hypothesis should 
 be, in any degree, plausible to any one who knows what 
 the sources of the history of Christ really are. Not 
 only do they belong to the very earliest age of the 
 Christian Church, being in fact the records of contem- 
 poraries, and even of eye witnesses, but we have the 
 very same proof of the miracles of Christ that we have 
 of His personal goodness. If we have no sufficient 
 evidence of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, 
 then, for exactly the same reason, we have no proof that 
 Jesus ever spoke the words that are called the Sermon 
 on the Mount. In a word, we know nothing whatever 
 about Him. 
 
 Eationalism, therefore, having most .unquestionably 
 within its province all problems of literary criticism, 
 must determine so far as possible the date and author- 
 ship of the New Testament books. Having within its 
 province human nature, with all its good and evil tenden- 
 cies, and also the laws of evidence, and the fitting tests 
 for the truthfulness of witnesses, must determine how 
 far the narrative in the four Gospels is worthy of our 
 belief. If it be worthy of belief, then the miracles of 
 Christ must be accepted as facts ; and any scientific 
 theory which is so narrow that it cannot embrace them 
 must be widened until it can. The results of a rational 
 investigation of the New Testament history I believe, 
 for my own part, to be this — ^that the New Testament 
 history is proved to be the best authenticated history in 
 all literature. 
 
316 THE NEW BBFOEMATION. 
 
 While, therefore, Eationalism is by no means incom- 
 patible with a hearty belief in the Christian Scriptures, 
 it is a conspicuous fact in the New Eeformation that the 
 Bible itself is subjected to some higher test, and that 
 test is human reason. Or, perhaps I ought to say, that 
 higher test is the whole of human nature, and the whole 
 of human experience. The right use of reason is so 
 much more difficult than the quotation of texts of 
 Scripture, that no one can feel surprised at the extreme 
 vexation of those good men who, having justified their 
 dogmas by texts, are afterwards required to justify the 
 texts. And yet this is the very thing which every 
 missionary requires from every heathen, and every 
 Protestant requires from every Papist, what every 
 Dissenter requires from every Anglican, what is required 
 by every sectary, even down to the Plymouth Brethren. 
 It is ridiculous to ask people to employ their reason 
 upon the interpretation of the Bible, and to refuse the 
 right of reason to inquire into the far more important 
 question — What right has a certain set of doctrines to be 
 considered " Bible" at all ? For the Bible is not a book 
 to be taken up and laid down at our mere convenience ; 
 it demands from us a certain principle and course of 
 life, which goes to the very root of our nature, and 
 influences every word and act, and even every thought. 
 If a man is willing to be turned upside down without 
 knowing why, the man is a fool ; and might just as well 
 be a Jew or a Mormon as a Christian. There is 
 absolutely no limit recognized by the New Eeformation 
 beyond which it shall be unlawful for human reason 
 to pass, excepting those limits beyond which it is 
 impossible for human reason to pass. Secret things 
 indeed belong to the Lord ; but, on the other hand, what- 
 
THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 817 
 
 ever we can find out is plainly not secret, it is revealed ; 
 and that which is revealed belongs to us and to our 
 children. That a certain doctrine is taught, or a certain 
 duty enjoined in Holy Scripture, is no longer conclusive. 
 Indeed, on the face of it the Bible is not a statute-book, 
 but a history ; not a declaration of what we ought to do, 
 but a record of what certain people thought they ought 
 to do. It is very likely that we ought to do the same 
 things, but that entirely depends upon circumstances ; 
 and the circumstances are not determined by the record 
 itself. There are thousands of Christians, for instance, 
 who for some wholly inscrutable reasons are fond of 
 black puddings ; but black puddings were distinctly for- 
 bidden by what may be called the Council of Jerusalem, 
 when the Apostles required the Gentiles to abstain from 
 fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood. 
 Not a creature cares. Probably not one Christian in a 
 thousand remembers anything about it, and it is quite 
 certain that it matters nothing whatever whether they 
 remember it or not. The objection to black puddings 
 is in the palate, not in the conscience. And in far graver 
 matters we are compelled to determine, not by texts of 
 Scripture but by our own reason, which texts of Scrip- 
 ture are meant to regulate our conduct and which are 
 not. This is universally confessed, whenever it can be 
 confessed safely. The fourth commandment, for in- 
 stance, requires the setting apart of every Saturday as a 
 day of rest ; all Christians take the liberty of setting 
 aside this precept, and they keep their Sabbath on Sun- 
 day. There is nothing whatever in the Bible distinctly 
 requiring this change ; it is quite justified, however, by 
 reason. Even circumcision has never been directly 
 abolished ; and St. Paul himself, the apostle of the 
 
318 THE NEW REFORMATION. 
 
 Gentiles, had Timothy circumcised. Circumcision has 
 been abolished, not by the Bible, but by reason. Again, 
 nothing can be in form more unlike the primitive 
 Christian worship than the worship of Christians in our 
 own day. The worship of the early Christians was quite 
 sociable, a sort of family prayers, almost always accom- 
 panied with a meal, the breaking of bread, and the cup 
 of blessing. What could St. Paul have made of an old- 
 fashioned English parish Church, with a big high softly- 
 cushioned pew for the squire, and a row of purgatorial 
 seats for the common people ? And yet, if the Church 
 has lost much by her departure from primitive simplicity, 
 she has also gained much ; and worship can only be 
 simple when the worshippers themselves are simple. In 
 fact, everybody employs reason until he gets into a fix ; 
 and then, with the devout piety of an ostrich, he thrusts 
 his head into the sand. " Preposterous rubbish your 
 heathen legends are," he says ; " your sacred books have 
 neither external evidence nor internal evidence to satisfy a- 
 reasonable being — Popish legends and myths J Are we, 
 enlightened Englishmen of the nineteenth century, are 
 we at this time of day to believe in liquefying blood, and 
 winking Marys, and tomfooleiy of that sort ?" " Dis- 
 gusting rubbish," echoes some promising young man. 
 "Yes, indeed," says the first, with an air of patronizing 
 approval, " what a mercy for all of us, and especially 
 for young men, that we are born in the days of gospel 
 light, and that all these absurdities have become for all 
 of us incredible." " I should think they have, old 
 gentleman," says the flippant youth ; " and all that stuff 
 about Jonah saying his prayers in ^poetry in the belly of 
 a whale." 
 
 Alas ! to what lengths will flippant young men go ! 
 
THE NEW REFORMATION. 319 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to liint at any of those positive 
 conclusions which the application of the new test has 
 already brought about. In fact, the conclusions are of 
 quite subordinate importance, the method and principle 
 are everything. So long as we believe that the necessary 
 divine help is granted to all human beings, whether they 
 be the right reverend bishops studying the fathers, or 
 wise men in the east studying the stars, or London 
 tailors studying, shall I say, " Payne's Age of Eeason ;" 
 so long as we urge upon every one the solemn duty of 
 opening his heart to the light, whencesoever it may come, 
 and walking in the light whithersoever it may lead ; that 
 is the gi'eat matter. Nevertheless, there are certain con- 
 sequences of the New Eeformation already sufficiently 
 conspicuous to deserve notice. 
 
 First of all, it destroys the claim of any Church to be 
 the Church. The exclusive claims of the different 
 churches are founded, not upon reason, but on some 
 sort of authority. A thinking man can find some truth 
 in every church, and perfect truth in no church. No- 
 thing but Rationalism can do justice, for instance, to the 
 Eoman Catholic church. The Evangelicals regard Eome 
 as the mystic Babylon, and the Pope as the scarlet 
 woman. The mass is to them a mere idolatry, and the 
 confessional a brothel ; they can see no glory in the 
 past history of the Eoman church ; they cannot under- 
 stand how her solid organization conquered heathenism, 
 and resisted barbarism, and formed all European nations 
 out of the seething chaos of the dismembered Eoman 
 Empire. And, on the other hand, when Englishmen 
 have begun to do justice to the Eoman Catholic church, 
 they never know where to stop — unless they are ration- 
 alists. They seem to think that what might have been 
 
320 THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 
 
 good for a particular crisis in human history, when God 
 had come forth mightily to shake the earth, is good for 
 a time in human history when the mighty shaking has 
 done its work, and men are called to rest and be thankful. 
 Nay, they imitate the Roman church, not as she was 
 in the days of her power and purity, when she was in 
 the van of human progress, the teacher of the ignorant, 
 the liberator of the enslaved, the great witness for the 
 impartial love of God to all mankind. They imitate 
 her as she became when her truth petrified into dogma, 
 when, by the haughty and even inhuman claim of in- 
 fallibility, she refused to lead mankind in the path of pro- 
 gress, and demanded that there should be no human pro- 
 gress to lead. They imitate her as she became, when her 
 priests degenerated into crafty tyi-ants, and her religious 
 ceremonial into pagan conjuring, when the very com- 
 munion of saints had become rather the excommuni- 
 cation of the mass of mankind, and the sacrament of 
 baptism the witness not so much of the salvation of the 
 baptized as of the damnation of everybody else. 
 
 Whenever now we hear a priest or layman requiring 
 our submission to some particular Church, because it is 
 the Church, we listen, not with contempt, for the man 
 may be good and earnest, his particular Church may be 
 just the place at which his spirit in its progress is for a 
 while resting ; but we listen to such a claim with the 
 profoundest pity for the man who makes it, because we 
 know that there is a way of holding the truth itself 
 which neutralises all its value. " Well knows he, who 
 uses to consider that our faith and knowledge thrive 
 by exercise as well as our limbs and complexion. Truth 
 is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain ; if her 
 waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken 
 
THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 321 
 
 into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man 
 may be a heretic in the truth ; and if he believe things 
 only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so 
 determines, without knowing other reason, though his 
 belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his 
 heresy."* 
 
 Any one who has come, even in the least degree, 
 within the reach of the new Reformation — a reformation 
 which, like every preceding one, is recognized last of all 
 by the authorized guides of religious thought — can only 
 read with a bewildered amazement such words as the 
 following ; the words of an Anglican priest, who writes 
 I pastoral letter for his congregation, after consultation 
 with other parish priests, and who may be regarded 
 almost as a representative of a very powerful sect within 
 ihe Establishment. " The Church of England takes her 
 stand not, on Acts of Parliament or Royal injunction, or 
 3ven a purer faith, or greater manifestation of the 
 spiritual life ; all this might one day fail her. She is 
 ;he one only Christian body having mission from Christ 
 ;,o this land, and on this she founds her claim on your 
 allegiance. She is the only church in the world which 
 3an claim the joint British and Saxon succession. The 
 succession of the old British Church, founded by St. 
 Paul, or one of his immediate companions, and that of 
 the later Saxon Church, founded by St. Augustine, met 
 in her, and in her alone. Other bodies of Christians in 
 England may have or may lack a valid priesthood ; but 
 all agree in either lacking mission altogether, or having 
 an intruded mission which is worthless." It is scarcely 
 possible to put words together which would contain more 
 
 * Milton's Areopagitica. 
 Y 
 
322 THE NEW REFORMATION. 
 
 absurdities than these few sentences. But what do the 
 mass of thinking men care for this sort of twaddle? 
 When a man tells us that what he calls mission is of 
 more importance than purity of faith, or reality of 
 spiritual life, we know exactly what to make of him. A 
 " mission" to proclaim the truth can never be separated 
 from the knowledge of the truth ; and it is simple non- 
 sense to affirm that a man who really knows the funda- 
 mental truths of the Christian religion must keep his 
 mouth shut until it can be proved that he is in the 
 succession of the old British Church founded by X or Y, 
 and of the later church founded by St. Augustine. 
 
 So, again, it is one of the results of the new Ee- 
 formation that a mere mistake may in no case be 
 punished as a sin. The intellect can only work ac- 
 cording to its own laws. Belief must in all cases depend 
 upon evidence, and if the evidence be insufficient there 
 can be no belief ; and it is not only right, it is inevitable, 
 that there should be none. But this elementary prin- 
 ciple is recognized by scarcely a single existing sect of 
 Christians. It is notorious, for instance, that almost 
 all those who call themselves orthodox believe that the 
 whole body of Unitarians are not only in error, but in 
 fatal error, so that unless they are brought to Trinitarian 
 truth they cannot possibly be saved. But surely there 
 are very many considerations by which this harsh judg- 
 ment might be modified. It is exceedingly difficult to 
 determine by what a man says on some particular dogma, 
 whether or not he believes even the fact of which that 
 dogma is meant to be the verbal expression. It is im- 
 possible, for instance, to read many of the hymns in 
 Mr. Martineau's selection, " Hymns for the Christian 
 Church and Home," without feeling that every one who 
 
THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 323 
 
 can sincerely use them must be able to give an answer to 
 the question, " What think ye of Christ ?" which crowds 
 of Trinitarians might envy. The doctrine of the Unity 
 of God is, to say the least, quite as important as the 
 doctrine of the Trinity. If either may be held in 
 abeyance it is surely the doctrine of the Trinity ; because 
 that doctrine is revealed to us, if at all, in the personal 
 history of Jesus Christ, and in the spiritual experience 
 of living men and women. These facts, therefore, the 
 life of Christ and the experience of human beings, 
 would of themselves suggest so much as is true of the 
 modern doctrine of the Trinity, whereas the doctrine of 
 the Trinity alone, without a very clear affirmation of the 
 Unity of Cod, might easily degenerate, and, as a matter 
 of fact, much oftener than not has degenerated into the 
 doctrine that there are three equal and separate Gods. 
 But not only is this danger to be apprehended in dog- 
 matic statements about the nature of God ; it lurks in 
 almost every corner of orthodoxy. The ordinary doctrine 
 of the Atonement, for instance, unmistakeably divides 
 the substance. It represents the will of the Father as 
 determined by the sacrificp of the Son; and in its 
 coarser forms it represents the will of the Father as vio- 
 lently opposed to the will of the Son. In fact, of all 
 those who use the strongest possible expressions, who 
 chant with all earnestness, on the appointed festivals, 
 the Athanasian Creed, — or who, on the other hand, declare 
 that the homage of Jesus Christ is a debasing idolatry, — 
 it is for the most part impossible to af&rm what their 
 belief really is. " We see men of all kinds of professed 
 creeds attain to almost all degrees of worth or worth- 
 lessness under each or any of them. This is not what 
 I call religion ; this profession and assertion, which is 
 
 t2 
 
224 EOMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 
 
 sistent, and it seems altogether impossible to fix upon 
 any one occasion when this faith, supposing it to haye 
 been reasonable in the beginning, became unreasonable 
 and fruitless. The Church met for instance to deter- 
 mine the conditions upon which the Gentiles should be 
 received into the fellowship of Christ's religion. It 
 cannot be doubted that, according to their custom, they 
 had prayed ; there was, also, as we learn from the 
 narrative itself, considerable discussion. But the 
 apostles and elders unquestionably believed that the 
 promise of Christ would be again fulfilled, and that in 
 this, their first great difficulty, they would not only be 
 preserved from error, but led into truth. It was, indeed, 
 a matter of the gravest importance, amounting almost to 
 a determination of what was the essence of the Christian 
 religion and the true foundation of the Christian Church. 
 The great Gentile world was really the world ; if that 
 had been excluded from the Church the exclusion would 
 have been equivalent to a denial of "the redemption of 
 the world by our Lord Jesus Christ." The decision at 
 which the apostles and elders arrived, not only consti- 
 tutes a crisis in Church history, but would have been 
 absurd, at least in their own judgment, if it had not been 
 founded upon some Divine authority. Therefore they 
 wrote after this manner : — " The apostles and elders 
 and brethren send greeting unto the brethren which are 
 of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia. For- 
 asmuch, as we have heard, that certain which went out 
 from us have troubled you with words, subverting your 
 souls, saying. Ye must be circumcised, and keep the law : 
 to whom we gave no such commandment : it seemeth 
 good to us, being assembled with one accord, to send 
 chosen men unto you with our beloved Barnabas and 
 
EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 225 
 
 Paul, men that have hazarded their lives for the name of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ. We have sent therefore Judas 
 and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by 
 mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to 
 us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these 
 necessary things ; that ye abstain from meats offered to 
 idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and 
 from fornication : from which if ye keep yourselves, ye 
 shall do well. Fare ye well." 
 
 This decree, if such it must be called, was at once 
 decisive and provisional. It decided what was of primary 
 importance, that the blessings of God, and, above all, re- 
 pentance and faith, and those gifts which were supposed 
 to be the special tokens of the favour of the Holy Ghost, 
 were by no means confined to the Jewish people. On 
 the other hand it was provisional, inasmuch as it was on 
 the face of it a condescension to the weaknesses, not to 
 say the prejudices, of converts from Judaism ; and has, in 
 fact, long since become obsolete. Whether or not a 
 Christian shall eat blood, depends now not upon his con- 
 science, but upon his stomach and palate ; while it seems 
 impossible to pretend that even the observance of the 
 first day of the week has any apostolical authority 
 approaching in distinctness or solemnity to this decree, 
 which determined the conditions of communion for 
 Gentile believers. 
 
 Again, there arose controversies about the person of 
 Christ ; in these controversies, also, the very essence of 
 Christianity was called in question. And if the promise 
 of the Holy Ghost to the Church was worth anything at 
 all, the settlement of all doubts as to the relation of 
 Christ to the Eternal God, and to the human race, was 
 unquestionably a fitting occasion for its fulfilment. 
 
 Q 
 
JOHN STUART MILL.* 
 
 Me. Mill is himself a very noble example of the effect of 
 that culture — intellectual, moral, and sesthetical — which 
 he recommends to the students of the University of 
 Aberdeen. It is impossible to read what he has written 
 without something like a horrible suspicion that some- 
 how or other the intellectual vigour of Englishmen is 
 degenerating. It is easy enough still to find accurate 
 scholars, it is also easy to find men who have not only 
 
 * References to Mr. Mill's works are to the editions named in 
 the following list. 
 
 A System of Logic, Ratiooinative and Inductive, being a con- 
 nected view of the principles of evidence, and tliemethods of Scientific 
 Investigation. In two volumes. Sixth edition. 1885. 
 
 An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy and of 
 the Principal Philosophical Questions discussed in his Writings. 
 1865. 
 
 Auguste Comte and Positivism. Second edition. 1866. 
 
 Dissertations and Discussions, Political, Philosophical, and 
 Historical. In three volumes. 1867. 
 
 Utilitarianism. 1863. 
 
 Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy. 1844. 
 
 Principles of Political Economy, with some of their applications 
 to Social Philosophy. In two volumes. Second edition. 1849. 
 
 Considerations on Representative Oovernment. Third edition. 
 1865. 
 
 On Liberty. Second edition. 1859. 
 
 Inaugural Address delivered to the University of St. Andrew's, 
 February 1st, 1867. 1867. 
 
JOHN STUAET MILL. 327 
 
 explored but enlarged the domain of the physical sciences. 
 Again, there is no lack of weak-minded philanthropists, 
 and of strong-minded men who are weak in love. But 
 there is scarcely a living Englishman whose culture is 
 so thorough on all sides, who is so complete a master 
 both of the old learning and the new, who is at once so 
 wise and so benevolent, who has so firm a hold of great 
 principles and so delicate a skill in applying them to the 
 complicated details of common life, as Mr. John S. Mill. 
 He may well look down with amazement on the sort of 
 education with which the present generation seems to be 
 content. The amount of knowledge which now elevates a 
 hoy or young man almost to the rank of a genius, is pre- 
 cisely the amount of knowledge which he ought to be 
 flogged for being without. It is wholly incredible that, 
 with anything like judicious teaching, a boy's whole 
 school-time should be exhausted in acquiring a very 
 imperfect knowledge of the classics, and perhaps even less 
 of mathematics ; while in most of what are called com- 
 mercial schools, not even so much as this is attempted. 
 There is a certain part of everybody's education which 
 should be accurate and general, and not merely pro- 
 fessional ; the man himself needs culture, and when that 
 gi-eat object has been secured, it will then be time 
 enough to learn the details of his own profession or 
 trade. Very few indeed have either the natural gifts or 
 the acquired knowledge of Mr. Mill ; but it surely ought 
 to be possible, and even easy, for any man or woman who 
 professes to ' be educated at all, to read with some fair 
 appreciation what he has written. 
 
 Even in mere style he is himself a model, whom the 
 Aberdeen students might with the utmost advantage 
 imitate. His is a truly classical style ; not in the sense 
 
328 JOHN STUAKT MILL. 
 
 of being a servile imitation of any one Greek or Latin 
 author, but in the sense of possessing those very qualities 
 vi^hich make the best of the Greek and Latin authors so 
 admirable. Mr. Mill's style is in all cases completely 
 subordinate to his matter, and wholly determined by it. 
 Having something to say, some truth to impart to aU 
 who may be willing to listen to him, his one great object 
 is, distinctly and accurately to say it. His writings are 
 so perfectly clear that it is almost impossible, even for 
 the dullest reader, to miss his meaning ; and in truth, 
 passing from him to those with whom he most closely 
 agrees, as to those subjects of which they both treat — 
 passing, for instance, from Mr. Mill's " Examination of 
 Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," to Professor Bain's 
 " Senses and Intellect" — the mere difference of style 
 occasions an almost painful discomfort. Mr. Bain's 
 book is by no means obscure ; and again, the style of 
 Sir William Hamilton has been sometimes regarded as 
 almost the perfection of philosophical language. But 
 compared with Mr. Mill Mr. Bain seems heavy and 
 uninteresting, and Sir W. Hamilton _ pedantic and 
 un-English. Mr. Mill has shown that it is perfectly 
 possible to express all that Sir W. Hamilton wanted to 
 say, in the very simplest English ; without one of those 
 uncouth technical terms, which are always misleading 
 when they are not almost miraculously precise — and 
 leaving to the reader no difficulty, except that which is 
 inherent in the subject. 
 
 Once again, judging Mr. Mill by those very tests 
 which he himself furnished for the guidance of the 
 Aberdeen students, we are bound to admit that his 
 extraordinary culture is no way regarded by him as a 
 private luxury, but far rather as a precious gift bestowed 
 
JOHN STUAET MILL. 329 
 
 upon him in trust for the good of his fellowmen. Some- 
 times he may seem to look down almost with contempt 
 upon ignorance and feebleness, but it is only when they 
 are professing to be something other than they are ; 
 when ignorance vaunts itself as wisdom, and weakness 
 of conviction affects to be sensitiveness of conscience, or 
 the special reverence of religion. Otherwise his sym- 
 pathy and his help, both in word and deed, have been 
 ever at the service of the oppressed ; and at the very 
 least, no one can accuse him of being nothing more 
 than a clever writer or a profound thinker, with no clear 
 and fruitful suggestions for the good of society. Science 
 must ever precede a perfect art ; and he who can perfect 
 the one is in the end the best helper of those who must 
 practise the other. But Mr. Mill's writings are not 
 merely scientific or theoretic, they abound with the most 
 fruitful practical suggestions ; they manifest, moreover, 
 an impartiality almost unexampled ; they are perfectly 
 free from all those devices by which mere partisans are 
 in the habit of blinding the eyes of their followers to the 
 dangers even of those changes which are necessary and 
 beneficial. Thus, for instance, the despotism of autocrats, 
 and the selfish incompetence of privileged classes, are 
 not more justly estimated than the fatal tyranny of the 
 numerical majority — the despotism and selfishness of 
 the mob. 
 
 " The gi-eat mass of Mr. Mill's labour," says Mr. 
 Martineau,* "has been devoted to what may be termed 
 the middle ground of human thought, below the primary 
 data which reason must assume, and short of the applied 
 science which has practice for its end. At the upper 
 
 * National Beview, 1859. 
 
330 JOHN STTJAET MILL. 
 
 limit, shunning the original postulates of all knowledge, 
 and at the lowei", its concrete results, he has addressed 
 himself to its intermediary processes, and determined 
 the methods for working out derivative but still general 
 truths. Does he treat of the investigation of nature? 
 he takes it up to the highest laws of phcenomena, irre- 
 spective of the hypothesis of an ulterior source. Does he 
 define the range of logic? It is the science of proof, 
 dealing only with the inference of secondary truths, not 
 the science of belief, which would include also the list of 
 first truths. Does he explain the business of Ethics ? 
 It is to appraise and classify voluntary actions by their 
 consequences, not to scrutinize them in their springs." 
 Possibljr, six years later, after the publication of the 
 " Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy," this 
 judgment might have been slightly modified. Mr. 
 Mill, no doubt, believes that he has much reduced the 
 number of primary data and original postulates, but it 
 can scarcely now be said that he has shunned them. 
 The reasons for his reticence in the earlier editions of 
 his " Logic " were by no means without force, but that 
 reticence has now ceased to be necessary. In the pre- 
 face to the sixth edition of his "Logic," he says; "A 
 cause of complaint has been removed, which could 
 hardly have arisen at a much earlier period. The main 
 doctrines of this treatise are on the whole compatible 
 with either of the conflicting theories respecting the 
 ultimate structure of the human mind — the a priori, or 
 intuitional theory, and the experiential theory ; though 
 they may require from the former, or rather from certain 
 forms of it, the sacrifice of some of its outworks. I had 
 therefore, as announced in the introduction, abstained 
 as much as possible from carrying the inquiry beyond 
 
JOHN STUAET MILL. 331 
 
 the peculiar field of logic, into the remoter metaphysical 
 regions of thought ; and have been content to express the 
 doctrines and reasonings of logic in terms which are the 
 common property of both the contending schools of 
 metaphysicians. This reserve v?as probably favourable 
 in the first instance- to the reception of the work, but a 
 time came when some readers became impatient of it. 
 Finding that the investigations continually stopped short 
 because they could not have been carried further without 
 entering on the higher metaphysics, some were disposed 
 to conclude that the author had not himself ventured to 
 pursue his speculations into that province, and that if 
 he had done so he might probably have brought back 
 from that region different conclusions from those arrived 
 at in the work. The reader has now the means of 
 satisfying himself whether this is the case or not. I 
 have indeed maintained the same abstinence as in the 
 former editions from the actual discussion of any but a 
 few outlying questions of metaphysics, since no other 
 plan seems to me appropriate to a treatise on Logic ; 
 but the place of such discussion has been supplied by 
 references to a work recently published, " An Examina- 
 tion of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy," in which 
 will be found the remainder of the investigations which 
 have necessarily been cut short in these pages. In a 
 few eases in which it appeared possible and appropriate, 
 as in the concluding section of Chap. III. of the second 
 Book, a place has been made for the substance of what 
 has been set forth and explained with greater fulness in 
 the separate work." 
 
 All nameable things are included by Mr. Mill in four 
 classes ; and, as all possible objects of thought can have 
 names given to them, all possible . objects of thought 
 
332 JOHN STUAET MILL. 
 
 must belong to one or other of these four classes. Every 
 thing that we can think of or name, must belong, either 
 (first) to feelings or states of consciousness, or (secondly) 
 the minds which experience those feelings, or (thirdly) 
 the bodies or external objects which excite certain of 
 those feelings together with the powers or properties 
 whereby they excite them, or (lastly) the relations 
 between states of consciousness. Mr. Mill is careful to 
 state that the second and third of these classes cannot 
 be proved to be real objects; he includes them only out 
 of deference to common language, which expresses in 
 this matter an almost universal belief. 
 
 But it is hard to understand why Mr. Mill should 
 have retained even his fourth class of nameable things. 
 States of consciousness cannot be considered as real 
 entities ; which admit of being compared with one another 
 just as, on the ordinary hypothesis, we can compare tables 
 and chairs with one another. When we have banished 
 both bodies and minds, the perception of a resemblance 
 between two states of consciousness is itself a simple 
 feeling. The inference that we are comparing two 
 separate and diiferent things may be just as delusive as 
 the inference that our sensations are occasioned by some 
 external object. In fact, Mr. Mill destroys even what 
 he calls a thread of consciousness. If it be not absurd 
 to speak of a man's life at all, it would seem that it con- 
 sists of a long series of mental states, not one of which 
 of course can be conscious of itself as part of a series. 
 What I call memory may be merely treacherous when it 
 seems to assure me that I, who experience a certain 
 feeling, now am the very same person who experienced 
 a closely similar feeling at some past time. Past and 
 present can only be thus united, not merely by an ideal 
 
JOHN STDAET MILL. 333 
 
 thread upon which the separate beads of consciousness 
 may be strung, but by the enduring reality of a living 
 subject of whose mental life these various states of con- 
 sciousness have formed a part. This, indeed, Mr. Mill 
 himself seems prepared to admit ; regarding it as an 
 ultimate and inexplicable fact. " The theory,"* he says, 
 "which resolves mind into a series of feelings, with a 
 background of possibilities of feeling .... has in- 
 trinsic difficulties which we have not yet set forth, and 
 which it seems to me beyond the power of metaphysical 
 analysis to remove. Besides present feelings, and pos- 
 sibilities of present feeling, there is another class of 
 phenomena to be included in an enumeration of the 
 elements making up our conception of Mind. The 
 thread of consciousness, which composes the mind's 
 phenomenal life, consists not only of present sensations, 
 but likewise, in part, of memories and expectations. 
 Now what are these ? In themselves they are present 
 feelings, states of present consciousness, and in that 
 respect not distinguished from sensations. They all, 
 moreover, resemble some given sensations or feelings, of 
 which we have previously had experience. But they 
 are attended with the peculiarity that each of them in- 
 volves a belief in more than its own present existence. 
 A sensation involves only this ; but a remembrance of 
 sensation, even if not referred to any particular date, 
 involves the suggestion and belief that a sensation, of 
 which it is a copy or representation, actually existed in 
 the past : and an expectation involves the belief, more 
 or less positive, that a sensation or other feeling to 
 which it directly refers, will exist in the future. Nor 
 
 * " Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's PMlosophy," p. 211. 
 
334 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 can the phenomena involved in these two states of con- 
 sciousness be adequately expressed without saying, that 
 the behef they include is, that I myself formerly had, or 
 that I myself, and no other, shall hereafter have, the 
 sensations remembered or expected. The fact believed 
 is, that the sensations did actually form, or will hereafter 
 form, part of the self-same series of states, or thread of 
 consciousness, of which the remembrance or expectation 
 of those sensations is the part now present. If, there- 
 fore, we speak of the Mind as a series of feelings, we are 
 obliged to complete the statement' by calling it a series 
 of feelings which is aware of itself as past and future ; 
 and we are reduced to the alternative of believing that 
 the Mind, or Ego, is something different from any series 
 of feelings, or possibilities of them, or of accepting the 
 paradox, that something which ex hypothesi is but a 
 series of feelings, can be aware of itself as a series." 
 
 But why should we accept the paradox instead of 
 believing that the mind is something different from any 
 series of feelings ? If memory were a very rare phe- 
 nomenon, occurring only once or twice in a lifetime, a 
 theory which could not without a certain sort of absurdity 
 explain memory, might nevertheless be a useful theory 
 of the mind. But, in fact, it may be affirmed that 
 memory is probably the most constant and universal of 
 all mental phenomena. If we want to ascertain the time 
 of day by looking at the face of a clock, we not only 
 remember what a clock is, but we must look at both its 
 hands, and then compare their positions on the dial. If 
 we do not remember the position of the hour hand when 
 we observe the minute hand, we shall never know the 
 time. We make the calculation with enormous rapidity, 
 but nevertheless it must occupy some time, however 
 
JOHN STUAET MILL. 335 
 
 small. That state of consciousness which we refer to 
 the minute hand must be regarded as separate and 
 different from that which we refer to the hour hand ; 
 and the two can only be compared if there he a perma- 
 nent subject of whose experience both these states of 
 consciousness are parts. Every one of those things which 
 are included in Mr. Mill's fourth class of things name- 
 able involves memory, while memory itself belongs also 
 to the first class. . A theory of mind, therefore, which 
 fails to account for the largest part of all mental phe- 
 nomena, can scarcely be considered complete. It may 
 safely enough be admitted that the Ego being an ultimate 
 fact is inexplicable, but that surely can be no reason for 
 rejecting it. Nor, on the other hand, is the mystery 
 the least lessened by a theory, however symmetrical, 
 which tries to escape the fact by an ingenious explana- 
 tion of the mode in which we might conceivably have 
 been led to believe that mind is a separate reality, even 
 though in reality it may be only a series of feelings, with 
 a background of possibilities of feeling. 
 
 Moreover, a philosophy which derives almost every 
 one of our firmest beliefs from the laws of association is 
 more deeply in need than any other philosophy of that 
 memory which it is unable to explain, and that abiding 
 personality of which memory testifies. If we grant the 
 existence of an abiding mind, manifesting itself of course 
 by diverse phenomena, but itself different from any and 
 from all of them — then it may not be difficult to account 
 for the belief in the Non-Ego by the laws of association. 
 But the laws of association mean, not simply that certain 
 states of consciousness have existed one after another, 
 but that I myself have continually observed that certain 
 things were always connected together by some contiguity 
 
336 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 or resemblance. Indeed, if we cannot believe this, it 
 seems impossible to imagine what we ever could be 
 justified in believing. If we regard the external world 
 as including possibilities of sensation, we can only arrive 
 at this belief because we ourselves have over and over 
 again experienced certain sensations in groups or sets. 
 Whether this purely ideal explanation of the Non-Ego 
 be philosophical and complete is at least an open ques- 
 tion ; but at any rate it requires, almost more than any 
 other theory, the separate reality of the Ego. 
 
 Mr. Mill is well aware that when he rejects the 
 ordinary explanations of universal beliefs, he is almost 
 bound to furnish a better explanation of his own ; and 
 accordingly he furnishes us with a very lucid exposition 
 of the psychological theory of the belief in an external 
 world. "I proceed," he says,* "to state the case of 
 those who hold that the belief in 'an external world is 
 not intuitive, but an acquired product." But it is 
 surely obvious that the mode in which we arrive at a 
 belief can have no effect whatever upon the reality of 
 that which is believed. Indeed the psychological theory 
 is more in need of the reality of the Non-Ego than its 
 rival. If our belief in an external world be intuitive, it 
 may be a harmless and a useful delusion. The belief, at 
 any rate, is both harmless and useful ; and the produc-" 
 tion of that belief without a world at all— with all its 
 details, and with all their consistency — might conceivably 
 have served the purpose of the Creator as completely as 
 the creation of a material universe. But if the belief 
 in an external world be not intuitive, not a part of the 
 original furniture of the mind; if it be an acquired 
 
 * "Examinations," &c., 190. 
 
JOHN STUART MILL. 337 
 
 product, needing for its production innumerable repeti- 
 tions of sensations in definite groups, how are these 
 sensations to be accounted for ? The organs of sense 
 themselves are parts of the external world: how are 
 they to be accounted for? Do the laws of associatio 
 depend upon innumerable repetitions of — nothing .- 
 
 "Matter," says Mr. Mil, "may be defined a Perma- 
 nent Possibility of Sensation. I see a piece of white 
 paper on a table. I go into another room, and though 
 I have ceased to see it, I am persuaded that the paper 
 is still there. I no longer have the sensations which it 
 gave me, but I believe that when I again place myself 
 in the circumstances in which I had those sensations, 
 that is, when I go again into the room, I shall again 
 have them ; and further, that there has been no inter- 
 vening moment at which this would not have been the 
 case. Owing to this law of my mind, my conception of 
 the world at any given instant consists, in only a small 
 proportion, of present sensations. Of these I may at 
 the time have, none at all, and they are in any case a 
 most insignificant portion of the whole which I appre- 
 hend. The conception I form of the world existing at 
 any moment comprises, along with the sensations I am 
 feeling, a countless variety of possibilities of sensation ; 
 namely, the whole of those which past observation tells 
 me that I could, under any supposable circumstances, 
 experience at this moment, together with an indefinite 
 and illimitable multitude of others which, though I do 
 not know that I could, yet it is possible that I might 
 experience in circumstances not known to me. These 
 various possibilities are the important thing to me in 
 the world. My present sensations are generally of little 
 importance, and are moreover fugitive ; the possibilities, 
 
 z 
 
338 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 on the contraiy, are j^ermanent, whicli is tlie character 
 that raainly distinguishes our idea of substance or 
 matter from our notion of sensation. These ^Dossibili- 
 ties, which are conditional certainties, need a special 
 name to distinguish them from mere vague possibilities, 
 which experience gives no warrant for reckoning upon. 
 Now, as soon as a distinguishing name is given, though 
 it be only to the same thing regarded in a different 
 aspect, one of the most familiar experiences of our 
 mental nature teaches us that the different name comes 
 to be considered as the name of a different thing. 
 
 " There is another important peculiarity of these 
 certified or guaranteed possibilities of sensation, namely, 
 that they have reference, not to single sensations, but to 
 sensations joined together in groups. "When we think 
 of anything as a material substance or body, we either 
 have had, or we think that on some given supposition 
 we should have, not some one sensation, but a great and 
 even an indefinite number and variety of sensations, 
 generally belonging to different senses, but so linked 
 together that the presence of one announces the possible 
 presence at the very same instant of any or all of the 
 rest. In our mind, therefore, not only is this particular 
 possibility of sensation invested with the quality of 
 permanence when we are not actually feeling any of the 
 sensations at all ; but when we are feeling some of them 
 the remaining sensations of the group are conceived by 
 us in the form of present possibilities, which might be 
 realized at the very moment. And as this happens in 
 turn to all of them, the group as a whole presents itself 
 to the mind as permanent, in contrast, not solely with 
 the temporariness of my bodily presence, but also with the 
 temporary character of each of the sensations composing 
 
JOHN STUART MILL. 839 
 
 the group ; in other words, as a kind of permanent substra- 
 tum, under a set of passing experiences or manifesta- 
 tions, which is another leading character of our idea of 
 substance or matter as distinguished from sensation."* 
 Now what is the problem? To account for our 
 belief in an external world. Let us grant that the 
 belief is acquired, though we cannot remember a time 
 when we were without it. Nevertheless, there must 
 have been a time when we first made an acquaintance 
 with what we believed to be external to ourselves. We 
 saw, for example — or at least something happened which 
 we afterwards were compelled to explain by the hypothe- 
 sis of a permanent mind or Ego — we obseiTcd a piece of 
 white paper lying on a table; we noticed its form, 
 colour, position, smoothness, hardness, weight; we 
 experienced, in fact, a definite group or set of sensations. 
 "We had never seen a piece of white paper before ; and 
 inasmuch as one single gi-oup of sensations not associated 
 as yet by contiguity or resemblance with any other 
 gi'oup, would awaken neither memory nor anticipation, 
 we should have no reason for expecting to see a piece of 
 white paper again. But supposing, by slieer accident, 
 we were to pass fifty or sixty times near the same table, 
 observe the same piece of white paper, and experience, 
 thereupon the same definite group or set of sensations, 
 how should we explain this recurrence of feeling ? 
 Would the piece of white paper be in the least degree 
 more real after we had seen it fifty times thkn it 
 was when we saw it for the first time ? If the belief in 
 an external world be intuitive, we should have referred 
 our sensations at first to the piece of white paper as an 
 
 * " Examination," &c., pp. 102—194. 
 z2 
 
340 J.OHN STUAET MILL. 
 
 external object ; but if it be acquired, tbe same result 
 would have been arrived at, though by a slower process. 
 We should have perceived that though we might move 
 away from the piece of paper, yet if we chose to be near 
 it, we were no longer masters of our own sensations. We 
 should have found out that we were unable steadily to look 
 at a thin, light, square piece of white paper, and then ex-- 
 perience the sensations of heaviness, and roundness, 
 and thickness, and blueness. We should have come to 
 feel ; — This piece of paper is as real as I am, and is 
 external to myself ; I do not take it away with me ; it is 
 not a group of sensations I can produce at will, whether 
 the paper be present or absent; moreover, when it is 
 present, it can compel me to experience a certain group 
 of sensations, however much I may try not to experience 
 them together. It is, therefore, not myself, it is not 
 merely a group of my sensations, but a real external 
 object, which is a cause of my sensations. Thus, 
 though by different roads, by direct intuition, or sure 
 inference, we arrive at the same result — an invincible 
 belief in the Non-Ego. To call a piece of white paper 
 a permanent possibility of sensations throws no light 
 whatever upon the problem we are endeavouring to 
 solve, because we must then ask how it is that a piece 
 of white paper is a permanent possibility of sensations ; 
 and, moreover, of a certain group of sensations, and of that 
 group only. The only reasonable explanation seems to be 
 that it is a permanent possibility of a definite group of 
 sensations, because it is a real object, external to ourselves,- 
 and wholly independent of our states of consciousness. 
 " One of the best ways," says Mr. Mill,* " of showing 
 
 * Logic, Vol. I., page 62. 
 
JOHN STUAET MILL, 841 
 
 ■what is meant by substance is, to consider what position 
 it is necessary to take up, in order to maintain its 
 existence against opponents. 
 
 " It is certain, then, that a part of our notion of a body 
 consists of the notion of a number of sensations of our 
 own, or of other sentient beings, habitually occurring 
 simultaneously. My conception of the table at which I 
 am writing is compounded of its visible form and size, 
 which are complex sensations of sight ; its tangible form 
 and size, which are complex sensations of our organs of 
 touch and our muscles ; its weight, which is also a sensation 
 of touch and of the muscles ; its colour, which is a sensa- 
 tion of sight ; its hardness, which is a sensation of the 
 muscles ; its composition, which is another word for all 
 the varieties of sensation which we receive under various 
 circumstances from the wood of which it is made, and so 
 forth. All or most of these various sensations frequently 
 are, and as we learn by experience, always might be 
 experienced simultaneously, or in many different orders 
 of succession, at our own choice ; and hence the thought 
 of any one of them makes us think of the others, and 
 the whole becomes mentally amalgamated into one mixed 
 state of consciousness, which, in the language of the 
 school of Locke and Hartley, is termed a complex idea. 
 
 "Now, there are philosophers who have argued as 
 follows. If we conceive an orange to be divested of its 
 natural colour without acquiring any new one ; to lose 
 its softness without becoming hard, its roundness without 
 becoming square or pentagonal, or of any other regular 
 or irregular figure whatever ; to be deprived of size, of 
 weight, of taste, of smell ; to lose all its mechanical and 
 all its chemical properties, and acquire no new ones ; to 
 become, in short, invisible, intangible, imperceptible, not 
 
342 JOHN STUAET MILL. 
 
 only by all our senses, but by tbe senses of all other 
 sentient beings, real or possible; nothing, say these 
 thinkers, would remain. For of what nature, they ask, 
 could be the residuum? and by what token could it 
 manifest its presence ?" 
 
 But what does this amount to beyond saying, that if 
 an object does really exist, and is really possessed of 
 certain properties, it will be manifested by means of 
 those properties. If an orange were neither round, nor 
 soft, nor juicy, nor coloured, nor possessed of weight, it 
 would simply not be an orange. Nobody denies that we 
 recognize external objects by means of the effect which 
 they produce upon ourselves — the real question is, what 
 is the best mode of accounting for those effects which 
 are so constantly produced upon ourselves. The existence 
 of external objects, having definite properties and dif- 
 fering from one another, would at once account for those 
 effects. If we do not accept that explanation, we are 
 compelled to accept the alternative — the psychological 
 theory; and that theory cannot possibly explain how it 
 comes to pass, that the very first time that we see a 
 piece of white paper, we experience the vei^ same group 
 of sensations, which we experience, without diminution 
 or addition, after seeing it a million times. 
 
 Indeed, on Mr. Mill's theory, the whole universe of 
 matter and mind may be compared to innumerable series 
 of small marbles, crossing and re-crossing one another 
 in all manners of ways. Each series may be taken to 
 represent the life of a single human being, and the 
 points of intersection may be taken to represent the 
 opportunities that exist of our knowledge of one another. 
 We may take any one series as a type of all the rest; 
 and we must imagine some invisible hand dropping 
 
JOHN STUAKT MILL. 343 
 
 marble after marble, sometimes in straight lines, some- 
 times in double parallel lines, sometimes in diverging, 
 and then again converging lines, sometimes in little 
 gi-oups, and sometimes in sets of groups, till we arrive 
 at the last marble of the series — which may stand for the 
 consciousness of any individual at this present moment. 
 These marbles are not, indeed, really connected with each 
 other, they do not belong to anEgo, representing the innu- 
 merable phcenomenal variations of one self. As ive look 
 down upon the series, we may observe that groups of 
 five, for instance, occur at regular intervals, always pre- 
 ceded (shall we say?) by groups of three and followed 
 by groups of seven. We may believe that whoever 
 dropped the marbles, dropped them according to a 
 definite plan; and after examining a large number of 
 series, we may arrive at the conclusion that they are all 
 arranged after the same plan. Now what the psycho- 
 logical theory should be prepared to answer, is the 
 question — what does the last marble know about all the 
 rest of the series of which it forms the conclusion ? and 
 yet again, what does that last marble know about all those 
 series of marbles which have crossed and re-crossed it at 
 so many different points ? How can that last marble 
 foresee (not what combinations it will itself hereafter 
 enter into, for it will be left where it is, a part of the 
 series, but) the future combinations of other marbles in 
 all manner of series ? 
 
 But when the external world has been resolved into a 
 self-conscious series of states of consciousness, psycho- 
 logy makes amends by becoming itself a department of 
 physiology. " Mr. Bain," says Mr. Mill,* in a review of 
 
 * " Dissertations,'' &c.,'iii. 117 — 119. 
 
344 JOHN STUAET MILL. 
 
 Professor Bain's " Pyschology," "commences his work 
 with a full and luminous exposition of what is known of 
 the structure and functions of the nervous system. What 
 may be called the outward action of the nervous system 
 is twofold — sea sation and muscular motion ; and one of 
 the great physiological discoveries of the present age is, 
 that these two functions are performed by means of two 
 distinct sets of nerves, in close juxtaposition; one of 
 which, if separately severed or paralysed, puts an end to 
 sensation in the part of the body which it supplies, but 
 leaves the power of motion unimpaired; the other 
 destroys the power of motion, but does not ajffect sensa- 
 tion. That the central organ of the nervous system, 
 the brain, must in some way or other co-operate in all 
 sensation, and in all muscular motion except that which 
 is actually automatic and mechanical, is also certain ; for 
 if the nervous continuity between any part of the body 
 and the brain is interrupted, either by the division of 
 the nei-ve, or by pressure on any intermediate portion, 
 unfitting it to perform its functions, sensation and 
 voluntary motion in that part cease to exist. That the 
 memory or thought of a sensation formerly experienced 
 has also for its necessary condition a state of the brain, 
 and of the same nei-ves which transmit the sensation 
 itself, does not admit of the same direct proof by experi- 
 ment, but is, at least, a highly probable hypothesis. 
 When we consider that in dreams, hallucinations, and 
 some highly excited states of the nervous system, the 
 idea or remembrance of a sensation is actually mistaken 
 for the sensation itself; and also that ,the idea, when 
 . vividly excited, not unfrequently produces the same 
 effects on the whole bodily frame which the sensation 
 would produce, it is hardly possible, in the face of 
 
JOHN STUART MILL. 345 
 
 all this resemblance, to suppose any fundamentally 
 different machinery for their production, or any real 
 difference in their physical conditions, except one of 
 degree. The instrumentality of the brain in thought 
 is a more mysterious subject ; the evidence is less direct, 
 and its interpretation has given rise to some of the 
 keenest controversies of our era, controversies yet far 
 from being conclusively decided. But the general con- 
 nexion is attested by many indisputable pathological 
 facts : such as, the effect of cerebral inflammation in pro- 
 ducing delirium ; the relation between idiotcy and cerebral 
 malformation or disease ; and is confirmed by the entire 
 range of comparative anatomy, which shows the intel- 
 lectual faculties of the various species of animals bearing, 
 if not an exact ratio, yet a very unequivocal relation, to 
 the development in proportional size, and complexity of 
 structure, of the cerebral hemispheres. 
 
 "However imperfect our knowledge may still be in 
 regard to this part of the functions of the nervous 
 system, it is certain that all our sensations depend upon 
 the transmission of some sort of nervous influence 
 imvarcl, from the senses to the brain, and that our 
 voluntary motions take place by the transmission of some 
 sort of nervous influence outward, from the brain to the 
 muscular system ; these two nervous operations being, 
 as already observed, the functions of two distinct systems 
 of nerves, called respectively the nerves of sensation and 
 those of motion. It is now necessary to notice another 
 physiological truth, brought to light only within the 
 present generation, viz., the different functions of the 
 two kinds of matter of which the nei-vous system is com- 
 pounded. The nerves consist partly of grey vesicular 
 or cell-like matter, partly of white fibrous matter. 
 
346 JOEN STUART MILL. 
 
 Physiologists are now of opinion that the function of 
 the grey matter is that of originating power, while the 
 white fibrous matter is simply a conductor, which 
 conveys the influence to and from the brain, and between 
 one part of the brain and another. With this physiolo- 
 gical discovery is connected the first capital improvement 
 which Mr. Bain has made in the Association Psychology 
 as left by his predecessors." 
 
 But what have we here ? The active element, the 
 spontaneity of the mind itself, is an ultimate mental fact. 
 Even a theory of association which omits this element 
 is not adequate, on Mr. Mill's own admission, to account 
 for our nature. It is Mr. Bain's conspicuous merit to 
 have included and explained this spontaneity in his 
 psychology. And how is this done ? By assuming the 
 existence of an external icorld, viz. : the grey matter of 
 the brain ! But it has already been proved that the 
 grey matter of the brain is itself only ideal, the result 
 of the law of association, a state of consciousness, a 
 marble in a series dropped by some invisible hand, 
 having no vital relation to any other marble in the series. 
 First, the mind (whatever that may be) gives us the 
 grey matter of the brain ; and then, the grey matter 
 of the brain gives us spontaneity, the foundation 
 of the law of association, the necessary condition of 
 mental life. Thus, we arrive at mere nescience. We 
 know nothing of body ; for granting the existence of an 
 ego, or a series of states of consciousness conscious of 
 itself as a series; granting spontaneity, the active 
 element of the mind ; body, including the grey matter 
 of the brain, may be a mere possibility of sensations, a 
 delusion, - a product of association and of the universal 
 (but unaccountable) tendency to believe that different 
 
JOHN STUAET MILL. 347 
 
 and mutually exclusive names stand for realities. Again, 
 ■we kliow nothing of mind ; for granting the existence of 
 the non-ego, even immortality and God may be a kind 
 of neural phenomena. And again, granting neither 
 mind nor matter as a starting point, we cannot make a 
 single assertion except a comprehensive confession of 
 utter blankness. Meanwhile, M. Comte has written six 
 volumes of Positive Philosophy ; Professor Bain two of 
 Psychology, and Mr. Mill .himself some score on divers 
 subjects. These we are to believe, are a veritable product 
 of Positioism. "Enfin, dans I'^tat positif, I'esprit 
 humain reconnaissant I'impossibilite d'obtenir des notions 
 absolues, renonce h chercher I'origine et la destination 
 de I'univers, et a connaitre les causes intimes des 
 phenomenes, pour s'attacher uniquement k decouvrir, 
 par I'usage bien combine du raisonnement et de 
 I'observation, lenrs lois effectives, c'est-a-dire, leurs 
 relations invariables de succession et de similitude. 
 L'explication des faits, reduite alors k ses termes reels, 
 n'est plus desormais que la liaison 6tablie entre les divers 
 phenomenes particuliers et quelques faits generaux dont 
 les progr^s de la science tendent de plus en plus a 
 diminuer le nombre."* So M. Comte's "Tableau 
 Synoptique " exhibits only a list, very much condensed, 
 of the cheats practised by non-existent minds upon 
 each other, consisting of scientific arrangements of the 
 phoenomena of non-existent matter. We must resign 
 knoiuledge, and build on a hypothesis. But how does it 
 come to pass that only one hypothesis will really account 
 for all the facts ; the hypothesis that among things name- 
 able are the minds which experience, and the bodies 
 
 * Comte. Cours de PhilosopMe Pos. (2nd Edition, 1864) i. 9, '10. 
 
348 JOHN STUAET MILL. 
 
 which occasion, states of consciousness ? Indeed, on 
 this basis of pure idealism, an appeal to the universal 
 belief of mankind is simply idle. Our fellow-creatures are 
 modes of ourselves — states of our own consciousness — if, 
 in truth, tue ourselves are more than a transient flash of 
 consciousness. How can the last marble of one series 
 discuss whether the negation of God is or is not conceiv- 
 able or believable by the ten thousandth marble of 
 another series ? Why devote several paragraphs to a 
 demolition of Mr. Herbert Spencer's criterion of truth, 
 when a part of the truth to be proved is the existence 
 of the very people whose invincible beliefs are to be 
 regarded as the best evidence we can secure for our 
 own belief either in matter or mind ? " Everybody 
 believes it ! " Nonsense. Prove that there is anyhodij. 
 Mr. Mill's Exposition of the Philosophy of Comte is 
 wonderfully lucid and impartial; and does much to 
 relieve that philosophy from misconception, giving the 
 explanations necessary to remove the obstacles which 
 prevent many competent persons from assenting to it, 
 "It is proper to begin," he says,* "by relieving the 
 doctrine from a religious prejudice. The doctrine 
 condemns all theological explanations, and replaces 
 them or thinks them destined to be replaced by theories 
 which take no account of anything but an ascertained 
 order of phenomena. It is inferred that if this change 
 were completely accomplished, mankind would cease to ■ 
 refer the constitution of nature to an intelligent will, or 
 to believe at all in a Creator and supreme Governor of 
 the world. This supposition is the more natural, as 
 M. Comte was avowedly of that opinion. He indeed. 
 
 * Anguste Comte (Triibner) 13 — 15. 
 
JOHN STUAET MILL. 349 
 
 disclaimed, with some acrimony, dogmatic atheism, and 
 even says (in a later work, but the earliest contains 
 nothing at variance with it) that the hypothesis of 
 design has much greater verisimilitude than that of a 
 Hind mechanism. But conjecture, founded on analogy, 
 did not seem to him a basis to rest a theory on, in a 
 mature state of human intelligence. He deemed all 
 real knowledge of a commencement inaccessible to us, 
 and the inquiry into it an overpassing of the essential 
 limits of our mental faculties. To this point, however, 
 those who accept the theory of the progressive stages of 
 opinion are not obliged to follow him. The Positive 
 mode of thought is not necessarily a denial of the super- 
 natural; it merely throws back that question to the 
 origin of all things. If the universe had a beginning, 
 its beginning, by the very conditions of the case, was 
 supernatural ;_ the laws of nature cannot account for , 
 their own origin. The Positive philosopher is free to 
 form his own opinion on the subject, according to the 
 weight he attaches to the analogies which are called marks 
 of design, and to the general traditions of the human race. 
 The value of these evidences is indeed a question for 
 Positive philosophy, but it is not one upon which Positive 
 philosophers must necessarily be agreed. It is one of M. 
 Gomte's mistakes that he never allows of open questions. 
 Positive Philosophy maintains that within the existing 
 order of the universe, or rather of the part of it known 
 to us, the direct determining cause of every phenomenon 
 is not supernatural, but natural. It is compatible with 
 this to believe that the universe was created, and even 
 that 'it is continuously governed by an intelligence, pro- 
 vided we admit that the intelligent governor adheres to 
 fixed laws, which are only modified or counteracted by 
 
350 JOHN STUAET MILL. 
 
 other laws of the same dispensation, and are never either 
 capriciously or providentially departed from. Whoever 
 regards all events as parts of a constant order, each one 
 being the invariable consequent of some antecedent 
 condition, or combination of conditions, accepts fully the 
 Positive mode of thought ; whether he acknowledges or 
 not a universal antecedent on which the whole system 
 of nature was originally consequent, and whether that uni- 
 versal antecedent is conceived as an intelligence or not." 
 
 This is much less offensive in form, if not in reality, 
 than the popular statements of the theological explana- 
 tion of facts — much less offensive even than the 
 Positivism of Mr. G. H. Lewes. It is plain that here 
 though in spite of all consistency, we are dealing with 
 real matter and real minds, and their mutual relations 
 and phoenomena, and endeavouring to account for them 
 and their origin. M. Comte angrily forbids us. Here 
 are premisses tvWiout conclusion, facts from which 
 nothing can be inferred. We may wander among 
 phenomena, finding by diverse canons of induction that 
 one is a mark of another ; but we may not find that 
 (or ev^n ask whether) all phenomena together are not a 
 mark of something else. Mr. Mill is more generous. 
 Theology is not inconsistent with Positivism if God be 
 an hypothesis, an impersonation of zero, keeping quite 
 out of the way of all our phoenomena. 
 
 But this is not ignorance of God, it is knoivledge of 
 not-God ; it is an excursion into those very regions from 
 which we are assured the human mind is for ever 
 excluded. To admit God, even hypothetically, is to 
 admit One who, being able to produce "Nature," is 
 able to change "Nature;" and of whose unfathomable 
 personality what we call nature may be a most transient 
 
JOHN STUAKT MILL. 351 
 
 phcenomenon. Meanwhile, tradition, more or less trust- 
 worthy, assures us that among recorded phenomena are 
 some that could not be accounted for by the ordinary 
 antecedents. "Why should Positivism gag the mouth of 
 history ? 
 
 In truth, Positivism, as expounded by its chief 
 prophets, is undoubtedly incompatible with the belief in 
 a living God who can interfere, and has sometimes 
 actually interfered, with the customary series of phe- 
 nomena. Nevertheless, outside its proper boundaries, 
 in its playground, or in its Holy of Holies, it may have 
 not only a morality, but a religion. M. Comte's ritual 
 and dogma are, indeed, most melancholy;* but even 
 Mr. Mill can understand a religion without a God. 
 Nor is his religion the least noble of the many proofs 
 of the greatness and purity of his soul. 
 
 "When we say that M. Comte has erected his philo- 
 sophy into a religion, the word religion must not be 
 understood in its ordinary sense. He made no change 
 in the purely negative attitude which he maintained 
 towards theology: his religion is without a God. In 
 saying this, we have done enough to induce nine-tenths 
 of all readers, at least in our own country, to avert their 
 faces and close their ears. To have no religion, though 
 scandalous enough, is an idea they are partly used to; 
 but to have no God, and to talk of religion, is to their 
 feelings at once an absurdity and an impiety. Of the 
 remaining tenth, a great proportion, perhaps, will turn 
 away from anything, which calls itself by the name of 
 religion at all. Between the two it is difficult to find an 
 
 * " Others may laugh, but we could far rather weep at this 
 melancholy decadence of a great intellect." — Auguste Comte, 109. 
 
352 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 audience who can be induced io listen to M. Comte 
 ■without an insurmountable prejudice. But, to be just 
 to any opinion, it ought to be considered, not exclusively 
 from an opponent's point of view, but from that of the 
 mind which propounds it. Though conscious of being 
 in an extremely small minority, we venture to think that 
 a religion may exist without belief in a God ; and that a 
 religion without a G-od may be, even to Christians, an 
 instructive and profitable object of contemplation. 
 
 " What, in truth, are the conditions necessary to con- 
 stitute a religion ? There must be a creed, or conviction 
 claiming authority over the whole of human life; a 
 belief, or set of beliefs, deliberately adopted, respecting 
 human destiny and duty, to which the believer inwardly 
 acknowledges that all his actions ought to be subordinate. 
 Moreover, there must be a sentiment connected with 
 this creed, or capable of being invoked by it, sufficiently 
 powerful to give it, in fact, the authority over human 
 conduct to which it lays claim in theory. It is a great 
 advantage (though not absolutely indispensable) that 
 this sentiment should crystallize, as it were, round a 
 concrete object ; if possible a really existing one, though, 
 in all the more important cases, only ideally present. 
 Such an object Theism and Christianity offer 'to the 
 believer ; but the condition may be fulfilled, if not in a 
 manner strictly equivalent, by another object. It has 
 been said that whoever believes in ' The Infinite nature 
 of Duty,' even if he believes in nothing else, is religious. 
 M. Comte believes in what is meant by the infinite 
 nature of duty, but he refers the obligations of duty, as 
 well as all sentiments of devotion, to a concrete object, 
 at once ideal and real; the Human Race, conceived as a 
 continuous whole, including the past, the present, and 
 
JOHN STXJAET MILL. 353 
 
 the future. This great collective existence, this "Grand 
 Etre," as he terms it, though the feelings it can excite 
 are necessarily very different from those •which direct 
 themselves towards an ideally perfect Being, has, as he 
 forcibly urges, this advantage in • respect to us, that it 
 really needs our seiTices, which Omnipotence cannot, in 
 any genuine sense of the term, be supposed to do ; and 
 M. Comte says, that assuming the existence of a 
 Supreme Providence (which he is as far from denying as 
 affirming), the best, and even the only way in which we 
 can rightly worship or serve Him, is by doing our 
 utmost to love and serve that other Great Being, whose 
 inferior Providence has bestowed on us all the benefits 
 we owe to the labours and virtues of former generations. 
 It may not be consonant to usage to call this a religion ; 
 but the term so applied has a meaning, and one which 
 is not adequately expressed by any other word. Candid 
 persons of all creeds may be willing to admit that if a 
 person has an ideal object, his attachment and sense of 
 duty towards which are able to control and discipline all 
 his other sentiments and propensities, and prescribe to 
 him a rule of life, that person has a religion ; and 
 though every one naturally prefers his own religion to 
 any other, all must admit that if the object of this 
 attachment and of this feeling of duty is the aggregate 
 of our fellow-creatures, this religion of the infidel cannot 
 in honesty and conscience be called an intrinsically bad. 
 one. Many, indeed, may be unable to believe that this 
 object is capable of gathering round it feelings sufficiently 
 strong ; but this is exactly the point on which a doubt, 
 can hardly remain in an intelligent reader of M. Conite; 
 and we join with him in contemning, as equally irra- 
 tional and mean, the conception of human nature aa' 
 
 A A 
 
854 JOHN STUAET MILL. 
 
 incapable of giving its love and devoting its existence to 
 any object which cannot afford in exchange an eternity 
 of personal enjoyment."* 
 
 This is precisely in harmony veith much else in Mr. 
 Mill's writings, as for instance, the conclusion of his 
 inaugural address to the students of Aberdeen : — " I do 
 not attempt to instigate you by the prospect of direct 
 rewards, either earthly or heavenly ; the less we think 
 about being rewarded, in either way, the better for us. 
 But there is one reward that will not fail you, and which 
 may be called disinterested, because it is not a con- 
 sequence, but is inherent in the very fact of deserving 
 it ; the deeper and more varied interest you will feel in 
 life, which will give it tenfold its value, and a value 
 which will last to the end. All merely personal objects 
 grow less valuable as we advance in life ; this not only 
 endures but increases." t And yet more, the grand 
 burst of righteous indignation which all manner of 
 Pharisees mistook for blasphemy, in his examination of 
 Mr. Mansel's "Theological AppHcation of Sir W. 
 Hamilton's Philosophy:" — "If instead of the glad 
 tidings that there exists a Being in whom all the 
 excellences which the highest human mind can conceive 
 exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that 
 the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are 
 infinite, but what they are Ave cannot learn, nor what are 
 the principles of his government, except that 'the 
 highest human morality which we are capable of con- 
 ceiving ' does not sanction them : convince me of it and 
 I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that 
 I must believe this, and at the same time call 'this 
 being by the names that express and affirm the highest 
 * Oomte, 133—135. t Pp-, 98, 99. 
 
JOHN STUAET MILL. 855 
 
 human , morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. 
 Whatever power such a being may have over me, there 
 is one thing which he shall not do , he shall not compel 
 me to worship him. I will call no being good, who is 
 not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow- 
 creatures ; and if such a being can sentence me to hell 
 for not so calling him, to hell I will go." * 
 
 Nothing is more obvious than that a religion which 
 consists chiefly in a skilful calculation of the rewards of 
 virtue is a mere form of selfishness ; and such teaching 
 as Mr. Mill's may be heartily welcomed even by those 
 who are wholly unable to reconcile it with " Utilitarian" 
 morality. Nor is Mr. Mill's protest against pious greedi- 
 ness any the less necessary because the popular appeals 
 of religious teachers are so often addressed to that very 
 selfishness which it must be a chief triumph of any 
 religion worth hating utterly to destroy. But both 
 religion and morality seem to require a far surer founda- 
 tion than has been laid for them in Mr. Mill's philosophy. 
 For that philosophy excludes, not as denied but as 
 unknown, even a single real mind; and if a whole 
 human race may be assumed, why not have a God as 
 well as a religion ? For " God" is not necessarily that 
 meddlesome disorder which is assumed in what M. 
 Comte, with most offensive infelicity, calls "the theo- 
 logical '[ mode of philosophizing. Men as familiar as M. 
 Comte with the natural sciences are nevertheless believers 
 in God ; and by no means feel compelled to assume that 
 He will be for ever altering His plans. Nor do they 
 account for customary phenomena by the hypothesis of a 
 direct interference, rather than the operation of a fixed 
 
 * " Examination," pp., 102, 103. 
 aa2 
 
60b JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 rule — which rule, however, is itself the expression of 
 a purpose that we have no reason to believe is necessarily 
 unalterable.* The more we know of phenomena, espe- 
 cially the more we know of the ordeT of phenomena, the 
 less possible is it to account for all facts and all their 
 mutual relations without a cause beyond and apart from 
 phenomena. For Avhat we know there may exist innu- 
 merable "natures," innumerable series of phenomena, 
 in kind and in order wholly different from that series with 
 which we are familiar. Nor is it possible for us to 
 determine which of these natures is the better and which 
 is the less good; nor again, whether innumerable 
 changes might not be better than the permanence of any 
 one series of phenomena. Indeed, it seems highly 
 probable that if there really be a God, and if nature be 
 so orderly that by means of its orderliness God Himself 
 may be forgotten, and even plausibly denied, it would be 
 well that some interruption of the ordinary series should 
 actually take place. So long as the reasonable expecta- 
 tions which God Himself has justified are habitually 
 satisfied, or even so long as their occasional disappoint- 
 ment is fairly compensated, it may often be well to 
 depart from an order of procedure which, if entirely 
 invariable, might be supposed to be necessary. 
 
 At any rate, it is tolerably plain that M. Comte would 
 never have arrived at a religion unless he had met with 
 "une angelique influence," and experienced " une incom- 
 parable passion privee." It is easy enough to deny a 
 God, and even to resolve our own personality into an 
 unconnected series of states of consciousness, until some 
 living being distinct from ourselves presents to us a new 
 manifestation of the external world. Angelic influences 
 
 * See Mai-tineau's "Essays" (Triibner, 1860), pp. 180, 181. 
 
JOHN STUART MILL. 357 
 
 cannot easily be explained away, and the belief in any 
 real existence whatever, were it only the existence of an 
 old rag, contains within itself the possibility of the 
 existence of an immeasurable universe. What would 
 M. Comte have cared for the extinct members of the 
 human race if there had not been among them the 
 incomparable Madame Clotilde de Vaux? Over so 
 narrow a bridge he found it easy to cross into the bound- 
 less misty region, not of religion but of fanaticism and 
 superstition. 
 
 And in truth, devotion to the whole human race can 
 only be justifiable if there be a human race, and' if 
 devotion to that human race be reasonable; otherwise 
 such devotion must at least interfere with devotion to 
 our own selves ; and self-sacrifice, the mere neglect of 
 our own comfort for the sake of no higher good, is a 
 form of madness. Why not say to M. Comte, " This 
 human race that you would have us live for has no 
 existence whatever; it is one of those transient states 
 of consciousness which, immersed as we are in un- 
 fathomable delusions, we cannot help calling yours, but 
 neither you nor we exist ; and all human language, 
 all human affection, all human action is based upon 
 nothing." Would Mr. Mill advise us to leave the re- 
 ligion of heathens alone because it includes a creed and 
 a sentiment ? Would he not tell us that if the creed be 
 false we are bound to destroy it, and if the -sentiment 
 be irrational we are bound to desecrate it ? What can 
 any reasonable being make of M. Comte's religion ? To 
 a Christian it is a kind of blasphemous idolatry, and to 
 a Positivist it is a melancholy absurdity. 
 
 It has been said that " whoever believes in the infinite 
 nature of duty, even if he believes in nothing else, is 
 
358 JOHN STUAET MILL. 
 
 religious." But what can the infinite nature of duty be? 
 M. Comte refers the obligations of duty, as well as 
 all sentiments of devotion, to a concrete object, at once 
 ideal and real ; the human race, conceived as a con- 
 tinuous whole, including the past, the present, and the 
 future. But what is the use of referring duty to a 
 concrete whole if there be no concrete whole? And 
 may not the individual repudiate his obligations to 
 the concrete whole even if it exists ? A is required to 
 sacrifice his own interests to all the other letters of the 
 alphabet, either jointly or severally ; he wants to know 
 why, and he is told that it is a much grander and more 
 refined sort of happiness to care impartially for himself 
 and Z, than to care partially for himself alone. But 
 supposing he does not think so ; supposing he does not 
 care in the least for Z, and would gladly sacrifice him 
 to everlasting perdition for one thrill of personal enjoy- 
 ment : why not sacrifice Z ? A utilitarianism that ends 
 in this precept, " Seek always your own happiness, even 
 though you should have to sacrifice for it the happiness, 
 of everybody else," is intelligible and consistent ; but a 
 utilitarianism that ends in the precept, " Sacrifice your 
 own happiness whenever it would interfere with the 
 happiness of your fellow creatures and of the whole 
 human race," is preposterous and suicidal. It is easy 
 enough to believe that Mr. Mill would rather go to hell, 
 than do a wrong action ; but the old-fashioned utilita- 
 rianism, which alone is logical and consistent, would 
 only think him a fool for his heroism. Very few, then, 
 will be able to perceive how a Positivist can find any 
 infinite nature of duty to serve as a foundation either for- 
 religion or morals. 
 
 But whatever the ultimate principles may be which 
 
JOHN STUAET MILL. 359 
 
 Mr. Mill accepts, there can he no doubt whatever that in 
 " the middle ground of human thought below the primary 
 data which reason must assume," he, has accomplished 
 more than almost any other living man. His " Inductive 
 Logic " is by far the best existing guide in the study of 
 phoenomena, whether there be any external world or not. 
 Whether or not happiness be the sole criterion of morality, 
 he has directed our attention with special care to the 
 fact that a selfish man is a bad man. Omitting the 
 primary data, Mr. Mill's conclusions are all on the right 
 side ; and not only so, but expressed with singular clear- 
 ness and infectious enthusiasm. " I must again repeat," 
 he says,* " what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom 
 have the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness 
 which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in 
 conduct is not the agent's own happiness, but that of 
 all concerned. As between his own happiness and that 
 of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly 
 impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. 
 In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the 
 complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you 
 would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, 
 constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. 
 As the means of making the nearest approach to this 
 ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social 
 arrangements should place the happiness, or (as speaking 
 practically it may be called) the interest, of every indivi- 
 dual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest- 
 of the whole ; and secondly, that education and opinion, 
 which have so vast a power over human character, 
 should so use that power as to establish in the mind of 
 every individual an indissoluble association between his 
 
 * " Utilitarianism," pp. 24, 25. 
 
360 JOHN STUAET MILL. 
 
 own happiness and the practice of such modes of conduct, 
 negative and positive, as regard for the universal happi- 
 ness prescribes ; so that not only he may be unable to 
 conceive the possibility of happiness to himself, con- 
 sistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but 
 also that a direct impulse to promote the general good 
 may be in every individual one of the habitual motives 
 of action, and the sentiments connected therewith may 
 fill a large and prominent place in every human being's 
 sentient existence." Nay, he holds that virtue itself is 
 to be desired disinterestedly for itself; is capable of 
 becoming to the individual a good in itself, without 
 looking to any end beyond it, — desirable in itself, even 
 though in the individual instance it should not produce 
 those other desirable consequences which it tends to 
 produce, and on account of which (in Mr. Mill's judg- 
 ment) it is held to be virtue.* What can we need better 
 than this ? 
 
 Perhaps the most perfect of Mr. Mill's works is his 
 " Political Economy ; " a mine of treasure which cannot 
 be too carefully explored by those who would understand 
 the social problems of the day, or help in their practical 
 solution. " Those branches of politics," he says to the 
 students of the University of Aberdeen, t " or of the laws 
 of social life in which there exists a collection of facts or 
 thoughts sufficiently sifted and methodized to form the 
 beginning of a science, should be taught ex professo. 
 Among the chief of these is Political Economy — the 
 sources and conditions of wealth and material prosperity 
 for aggregate bodies of human beings. This study 
 approaches nearer to the rank of a science, in the sense in 
 
 * " Utilitaiiamsin," pp. 52 — 54. t " Inaugural Address," 09, 70. 
 
JOHN STUAET MILL. 361 
 
 ■which we apply that name to the physical sciences, than 
 anything else connected with politics yet does. I need not 
 enlarge on the important lessons which it affords for the 
 guidance of life, and for the estimation of laws and 
 institutions, or on the necessity of knowing all that it 
 can teach in order to have true views of the course of 
 human affairs, or form plans for their improvement which 
 will stand actual trial. The same persons who cry 
 down Logic will generally warn you against Political 
 Economy. It is unfeeling, they will tell you. It 
 recognizes unpleasant facts. For my part the most un- 
 feeling thing I know of, is the law of gravitation ; it 
 breaks the neck of the best and most amiable person 
 without scruple, if he forgets for a single moment to give 
 heed to it. The winds and waves too are vei-y unfeeling. 
 Would you advise those who go to sea to deny the winds 
 and waves ; or to make use of them, and find the means 
 of guarding against their dangers ? My advice to you 
 is to study the great writers on Political Economy, and 
 hold firmly by whatever in them you find true ; and 
 depend upon it that if you are not selfish or hard- 
 hearted already. Political Economy will not make 
 you so." 
 
 It is scarcely possible to conceive of a sillier objection 
 to the study of Political Economy, one more completely 
 without foundation in fact, than the objection that it is 
 unfeeling. If the objection were made against most 
 forms of modern philanthropy, it would have some 
 weight, for the most deliberate cruelty could scarcely be 
 more mischievous than the well-meant endeavours of 
 many benevolent people to benefit their fellow-creatures ; 
 unfortunately too, the mischief is often consecrated by 
 i-eligious associations. The most offensive part of 
 
362 JOHN STDAET MILL. 
 
 Political Economy is that which has often been stigma- 
 tized as Malthusianism. The wages of the labouring^ 
 class must depend partly upon the amount of capital 
 which will be employed in the purchase of labour ; and 
 partly upon the number of individuals among whom that 
 amount of capital will be distributed. It is conceivable 
 enough that the wealth of the rich might simply be 
 stolen from them, that they might be compelled to 
 employ more labourers, or to give higher wages ; but 
 even that would be only an iniquitous mode of increasing 
 the capital employed in the purchase of labour. But if 
 only a hundred pounds a week are to be spent upon a. 
 hundred workmen, paid at the same rate, any child can 
 calculate what each man's share will be ; and if the 
 number of workmen be doubled, any child can see that 
 the wages of each man must be diminished by half. 
 There are two ways, therefore, of increasing wages : 
 1st, increase directly or indirectly the capital to be 
 employed in the purchase of labour without increasing 
 the number of labourers ; or, 2ndly, diminish directly 
 or indirectly the number of persons among whom this 
 wage-fund will have to be distributed without diminishing 
 the fund itself. There are many ways of diminishing the 
 number of human beings; or, at least, of preventing their 
 too rapid increase. They may, however, all be reduced 
 to two classes, preventive or destructive. The first of 
 these modes is the one habitually adopted by the upper 
 and middle classes of society ; the second is habitually 
 adopted by the labouring classes. If a young man of 
 good family has only just enough to live on, that is to 
 say, just enough to live on without sinking into a lower 
 stratum of society, he never dreams of encumbering 
 himself with a wife and a large family; he remains 
 
JOHN STUART MILL. 363' 
 
 unmarried, just as many people who prefer riding to 
 walking manage to exist without a carriage and pair. 
 If a working man has only just enough to live upon, he 
 marries at the first practicable moment a girl who has 
 nothing whatever to live upon, and then they have a 
 number of children who must also take their share of 
 the scanty pittance of their father. In times of scarcity 
 the father's wages are often reduced, or he may remain 
 out of work for many ^ weeks in Succession; then the 
 wife' and children have, at first not enough, and ulti- 
 mately nothing at all to eat. Of course they get ill ; if 
 the distress continue long the weakest of them die — and. 
 so far as that family is concerned the number of indivi- 
 duals among whom the wage-fund must be distributed, 
 is diminished by the destructive mode. It is exactly this, 
 sort of misery that Political Economy would prevent. 
 The question is not this : is matrimony a divine institu- 
 tion? nor this; are you very much in love? nor this; 
 why should you be deprived of those natural pleasures 
 'which are enjoyed by the rich? The real question is far 
 less romantic, and, moreover, far more easily answered.. 
 You know exactly what your income is, can you afford 
 to keep a wife and six children ? What's the use of 
 being very much in love, if you have not a bread-loaf. 
 
 Unfortunately, there is among working people, as. 
 among all other people, a large amount of vice; and 
 good men, knowing well the unspeakable worth of the. 
 legal safeguard of marriage, imagine that for the pre- 
 vention of vice, marriages among the poor should not only 
 be facilitated but greatly encouraged. To all such 
 persons, I venture to recommend a very careful study of 
 the thirteenth chapter of the second book of Mr. Mill's 
 " Political Economy." "Poverty, like most social evils,"" 
 
364 JOHN STUAET MILL. 
 
 he says,* " exists because men follow their brute in- 
 stincts without due consideration. But society is 
 possible, precisely because man is not necessarily a 
 brute. Civilization, in every one of its aspects, is a 
 struggle against the animal instincts. Over some even 
 of the strongest of them it has shown itself capable of 
 acquiring abundant control. It has artificialized large 
 portions of mankind to such an extent, that of many of 
 their most natural inclinations they have scarcely a 
 vestige or a remembrance left. If it has not brought the 
 instinct of population under as much restraint as is 
 needful, we must remember that it has never seriously 
 tried. What efforts it has made have mostly been in 
 the contrary direction. Religion, morality, and states- 
 manship have vied with one another in incitements to 
 marriage, and to the multiplication of the species, so it 
 be but in wedlock. Eeligion has not even yet dis- 
 continued its encouragements. The Roman Catholic 
 clergy (of any other clergy it is unnecessary to speak, 
 since no other have any considerable influence over 
 the poorer classes) everywhere think it their duty to 
 promote marriage in order to prevent fornication. 
 There is still in many minds a strong religious prejudice 
 against the true doctrine. The rich, provided the con- 
 sequences do not touch themselves, think it impugns the 
 wisdom of Providence to suppose that misery can result 
 from the operation of a natural propensity ; the poor 
 think that ' God never sends mouths but he sends 
 meat.' No one would guess from the language 
 of either, that man had any voice or choice in the 
 matter. So complete is the confusion of ideas on the 
 whole subject, owing in a great degree to the mystery 
 * "Political Economy," i. 455 — 457 (see the whole chapter). 
 
JOHN STUAKT MILL. 365 
 
 in which it is shrouded by a spurious delicacy ; which 
 prefers that right and wrong should be mismeasured and 
 confounded on one of the subjects most momentous to 
 human welfare, rather than that the subject should be 
 freely spoken of and discussed. People are little aware 
 of the cost to mankind of this scrupulosity of speech. 
 The diseases of society can, no more than corporal 
 maladies, be prevented or cured without being spoken 
 about in plain language. All experience shows that the 
 mass of mankind never judge of moral questions for 
 themselves, never see anything to be right or wrong 
 until they have been frequently told it ; and who tells 
 them that they have any duties in the matter in question, 
 while they keep within matrimonial limits ? Who 
 meets with the smallest condemnation, or rather who 
 does not meet with sympathy and benevolence, for any 
 amount of evil he may have brought upon himself and 
 those dependant on him, by this species of incontinence." 
 " One cannot wonder that silence on this great depart- 
 ment of human duty should produce unconsciousness of 
 moral obligations, when it produces oblivion of physical 
 facts. That it is possible to delay marriage, and to live 
 in abstinence while unmarried, most people are willing 
 to allow ; but when persons are once married, the idea, 
 in this country, never seems to enter any one's mind 
 that having or not having a family, or the number of 
 which it shall consist, is at all amenable to their own 
 control. One would imagine that children were rained 
 down upon married people direct from heaven, without 
 their being art or part in the matter ; that it was really, 
 as the common phrases have it, God's will and not their 
 own, which decided the numbers of their offspring." 
 "Whether or not the cruel folly of bringing into the 
 
566 JOHN STUAET MILL. 
 
 world more people than one can keep is at all lessened 
 or mitigated by the performance of a preliminary religious 
 •ceremony, may be left for the decision of casuists. 
 Political Economy, so far at least as the theory of wages 
 is concerned, has nothing whatever to do either with 
 the religious or the legal sanctions of marriage; it is 
 concerned only with the physical results. Married 
 people without children can live just as comfortably as 
 unmarried people without children. 
 
 That the wealth of a country like England is neither 
 wisely nor justly distributed, political economists would 
 be the first to admit ; indeed, they are the only people 
 who understand the matter at all. To amend the laws 
 and to improve the social condition of the country, 
 would be, indeed, an immeasurable benefit, not only to 
 the working classes but to public morality ; but to act as 
 if a bad law did not exist, is an extremely different 
 thing from mending it. It may be true that the wealth 
 of England should be so distributed that every honest 
 working man should earn enough wage, not only to 
 support a wife and feed an average family, but also to 
 educate them and to secure some fair amount of leisure 
 for the culture of his own mind. But if the wealth of 
 England be not distributed after that manner, what is 
 the use of acting as if it were ? If a man who deserves 
 a hundred shillings, only gets twenty, what will a 
 butcher or a baker care for his deserts ? The real 
 hindrances in the way of an equitable distribution of 
 wealth, are, among other things, the laws which regulate 
 the descent and transfer of real property, popular 
 ignorance, the profuse and joyless waste of the unpro- 
 •ductive classes of society, and the everlasting race for 
 liches, the treading upon one another's heels, the keeping 
 
JOHN STUAET MILL. 367 
 
 up appearances, which has in fact turned almost all 
 human life into a lie. And yet, the very people who 
 accuse political economy of being unfeeling, are .the 
 Tery people who are the main supporters of nearly every 
 social abuse. All the church property in the kingdom, 
 or at any rate by far the largest part of it, is a conse- 
 -crated justification of perhaps the most reckless absurdity 
 of which a nation can be guilty. * And what have the 
 philanthropists, excepting those who were more or less 
 political economists also, done for popular education ? 
 Left it to the clergy; a body of men who have probably 
 with a sublime self-denial, spent fifty times as much on 
 education out of their own pockets as the present 
 generation of Churchmen has contributed to the stipends 
 of the clergy. But notwithstanding the extreme bene- 
 volence of the clergy, any public education entrusted 
 solely to their management will be limited on the one 
 side by Anglican orthodoxy, and on the other by the 
 opinions and prejudices of country squires. Now 
 Anglican orthodoxy excludes Dissenters from receiving 
 any education ; and the opinions and prejudices of 
 country squires limit the education actually given to 
 the mere rudiments even of the most necessary branches 
 of knowledge. We are all amazed at the folly of strikes, 
 the injustice and wastefulness of trades' unions, and 
 the like. What excellent advice Lord Derby can give to 
 working men — as thus, at Manchester : — 
 
 " I warn as a friend, as an earnest and sincere friend — and, 
 speaking from the deepest conviction, I warn the working classes 
 not to be led away by the flattering delusion of men who will tell 
 them that they can induce Parliament to pass a measure of 
 
 * See " Dissertations," i., 1 — 41. 
 
368 JOHN STUAET MILL. 
 
 exceptional legislation for their special and immediate benefit. 
 They cannot induce, I hope, any Parliament to pass any such 
 measure ; and if such a measure were to be passed, the workmen 
 would find, to their misfortune, that it was the greatest injury 
 that could be done them. I mean a measure attempting to 
 regulate the rate of wages. To interfere between labour and 
 capital is beyond the legislation of any Parliament ; and indeed it 
 would be in short only to lead Parliament to adopt such a course 
 of legislation as has been recommended in some of the bye laws 
 we have heard so much of of late in connection with various trades' 
 unions in the country. Don't let me be misunderstood. I am 
 no adversary or opponent of trades' unions. I think that coniined 
 to then- legitimate object they are useful and salutary instru- 
 ments for maintaining the rights of the labouring classes. 
 « ' # « * « *- # 
 
 " I say that even strikes, objectionable as they are in principle, 
 and injurious as they are to the working classes, are not an 
 illegitimate or illegal mode of proceeding ; I say that if capital 
 and labour cannot agree together, the only mode of bringing them 
 together is the absence of one or the other — the capital to employ 
 the labour, or the labourer to give the capital. 
 
 " It is a great disadvantage to the honest man who is only 
 desirous of making the most of his industry, for such a man to be 
 prohibited from turning his own skill to his advantage. Can 
 there be a greater restriction upon the labouring man '? What is 
 the capital of the labouring man ? It is his labour; and really if 
 these societies are to prevent a man from making the most of his 
 labour it is simply to put the idle, the indolent and the worthless 
 upon the same footing as the intelligent and industrious, and to 
 bring all labour down to a dead level, and to increase the expense 
 of all work that depends on that labour, not only by increased 
 wages, but also by the uncertainty which prevails on the part of 
 every contractor as to liis power of executing a contract, and the 
 necessity of charging higher prices, because he may be deprived 
 of the services of those upon whom he relies. 
 
 " I say that trades' unions go beyond their limits when they 
 agree not only themselves not to work, but to prevent and intimi- 
 date other persons from working. For my own part, looking to the 
 
JOHN STUART MILL. 369 
 
 public and private interests of tie members, I cannot for the life 
 of me understand how English workmen, entitled to make the 
 most of their own industry and science, can submit to tlie tyranny 
 under which they are groaning. Gentlemen, the whole course of 
 our legislation for the last, I won't say how many years, has been 
 a protest against class legislation. It has been an argument in 
 favour of the free admission of all foreign goods ; an argument in 
 favour of free trade ; an argument opposed to all class protection. 
 What would you say if in this city of Manchester Government 
 were to impose, as in ContineDtal cities, an ootroi duty on the 
 importation of every article of agricultural produce ? The whole 
 city would be in an uproar ; and yet you submit to the bye-laws 
 of associations which say that not only shall a tax be paid, but 
 not a single brick shall be laid in Manchester that is imported — 
 not from a foreign country — from beyond a single district — even 
 beyond the breadth of a canal. We are speaking in the Free 
 Trade Hall. What do you say of bye -laws which say that not a 
 stone shall be worked in a quarry to save an enormous additional 
 amount of labour in carting it to the place where it is to be 
 deposited, but that it shall be brought in bulli and woi-ked by the 
 workmen, and if it should have been worked in the quarry, then the 
 farce is to be gone through of working it again by workmen in 
 Manchester? If this system is to prevail, what is to become of 
 our threshing-machines and our steam ploughs, our mowing and 
 reaping machines ? You would have to resort to your old flail 
 and other obsolete implements, and in manufactures to old hand- 
 loom weaving ; you would have to do away with the power-loom 
 and all those old inventions of genius which, while they have 
 multiplied to an indefinite amount the productive capital of the 
 country, have at the same time multiphed to an extent almost 
 equally indefinite the amount and number of persons employed. 
 I say that the British workman would do well seriouslj' to consider 
 these things." 
 
 This is very admirable advice ; but it will not be 
 appreciated, it will not even be understood, by the grown- 
 up men to whom it is addressed for the first time. 
 Nobody knows better than the great Conservative leader, 
 that the advantages of free trade are far from obvious, 
 
 B B 
 
370 JOHN STUAET MILL. 
 
 whether free trade be in labour or in corn. If men are 
 to be brought to believe that itis impossible for them by 
 mere combination or intimidation permanently to raise 
 the rate of wages, this result can only be secured by 
 careful education ; and all education, the effects of which 
 are to last through life, must begin in childhood. How 
 many schools then are there under the control of the 
 clergy and squires in which even the simplest rudiments 
 of political economy are taught to the children ? It 
 may indeed be urged, that the children of the wealthier 
 classes are left in equal ignorance of what every one 
 ought to know. So much the worse for the future of 
 England.' But, nevertheless, the danger in the latter 
 case is by no means so great as in the former. The 
 interests of the wealthier classes are obviously as well as 
 really inseparable from order and obedience to the laws ; 
 whereas the interests of the working classes are often 
 apparently though not really hindered and sacrificed by 
 the laws and usages of society. Everybody with three 
 hundred a year would expect to lose by a revolution; 
 whereas nothing would be easier than to convince the 
 majority of working men that they would be sure to 
 gain. Education is the less necessary for the wealthier 
 classes because prejudice and selfishness secure their 
 loyalty. But the loyalty and order of the working 
 classes can be secured by education alone. 
 
 It may very safely be affirmed of Mr. Mill's writings 
 that their practical conclusions are almost invariably 
 sound and noble. They furnish a splendid discipline 
 both for the intellect and conscience ; and they are works 
 of which it may truly be said that no educated English- 
 man can afford to be ignorant. 
 
UKWIS BROTHERS, PRINTERS, BDCKLERSBUKy LOMDON.